ADHD assessment and treatment

Brendan is a co-founder of Pandion Health and one of the psychiatrists who assesses and treats ADHD across the service. He works with children, adolescents and adults, and his general and forensic psychiatry training means he is often the clinician who takes on presentations where the picture is not straightforward.

ADHD is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder. Anxiety, depression, autism, trauma history, sleep disturbance and learning difficulties either sit alongside it or explain the symptoms outright, and separating them is a big part of the clinical work. At Pandion these are screened as standard in every assessment, and where ADHD is not the right answer the patient is told so clearly, with an explanation of what comes next.

Brendan also works with GPs on ongoing care after diagnosis, including co-prescribing and handback arrangements in line with the regulations that apply in each state and territory. Referring clinicians can read more on the shared care and referral page.

ADHD in women, and why it gets missed

A large part of Brendan’s ADHD work is with women who were never identified as children. He has spoken publicly about why that happens so consistently.

“When a boy is hyperactive, they become very destructive and very difficult,” he told Yahoo Lifestyle. “The parents will usually think, ‘We need to get this treated’. Whereas girls will often not have so much hyperactivity, but will more likely be the inattentive type.”

What follows is years of compensation rather than diagnosis. “Women are typically more socially intelligent. They want to mask inattentiveness,” he told Mamamia. “They’ll replay conversations in their head, think extra hard, or do additional work to compensate.”

Those strategies hold until the load becomes too heavy, and for many women that point is motherhood. “Motherhood is a whole new level of challenge. Multiple children needing things all at once, careers, relationships — these compensatory mechanisms can no longer cope. That’s when many mothers reach a crisis point and seek assessment.”

His case for getting assessed does not depend on the answer being ADHD. “It’s really important to get the assessment if you feel like something’s wrong,” he told Mamamia. “Let’s say it’s not ADHD, it might be something else that’s really treatable. Like, for instance, anaemia, which can cause inattention.”

Background and training

Brendan is an Australian-trained psychiatrist with subspecialties in child and adolescent, adult, and forensic psychiatry. He earned his medical degree from the University of Newcastle before undergoing psychiatry training across Sydney’s leading institutions, including Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Concord Centre for Mental Health, The Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network, and the Justice Health and Forensic Mental Health Network.

He holds advanced training certificates from the RANZCP in both Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Forensic Psychiatry, and is an Accredited Member of the Faculty of Adult Psychiatry. He completed a Master of Psychiatric Medicine through HETI and a Graduate Certificate in Forensic Mental Health at UNSW. In 2019 he was a Visiting Forensic Psychiatry Fellow at the Department of State Hospitals in Sacramento, California, attending the academic forensic program at UC Davis.

He served as Conjoint Associate Lecturer at UNSW from 2017 to 2022, and has previously held positions with Justice Health NSW, Top End Mental Health and headspace Youth Early Psychosis. He serves on the RANZCP Section of Child, Adolescent and Forensic Psychiatry committee.

He has worked across metropolitan, regional and remote settings in New South Wales and the Northern Territory, and is highly experienced in telehealth delivery. In addition to clinical practice, he regularly conducts medicolegal assessments.

Publications

• Daugherty B. Moving away from cosmetic psychiatry and toward eudaimonic psychiatry. Australasian Psychiatry. 2025;33(4):612–614. doi:10.1177/10398562251347920
• Daugherty B, Warburton K, Stahl SM. A social history of serious mental illness. CNS Spectrums. 2020;25(5):584–592. doi:10.1017/S1092852920001364

Media and commentary

Brendan writes and speaks regularly on ADHD, particularly on how it presents in women and why it is so often missed.

• ADHD Assessment: What Actually Happens in a Psychiatrist’s Appointment — ADHD Mums podcast
• ADHD and motherhood: how symptoms suddenly emerge — Mamamia
• Why ADHD is commonly misdiagnosed in Australian women — Yahoo Lifestyle Australia
• Clinical commentary on LinkedIn

Outside the clinic

Brendan splits his time between Australia and living abroad. He has a deep love for nature, ball sports, keeping fit and travel, preferably all at the same time, and hosts The Self You Seek, a podcast on self-actualisation, empowerment and mental health.