ADHD assessment and treatment

Sandoval provides ADHD assessment and management for adults, and sees people aged 18 and over. He recognises the complexity of ADHD and how often it co-occurs with other psychiatric conditions, alongside each person’s particular presentation and life context.

ADHD is rarely the only thing present. Anxiety, depression, trauma, sleep disturbance and substance use either sit alongside it or account for the symptoms outright, and separating them is the substance of the assessment. At Pandion these are screened as standard rather than treated as an optional extra. Where ADHD is not the right answer, Sandoval will say so and set out what he considers to be going on instead.

Sixteen years as a consultant across acute inpatient units and community mental health services gives him a wide reference point for that judgement. Adults arriving at an ADHD assessment have often collected several diagnoses along the way, and someone who has seen the full range is better placed to work out which of them still fit.

How he works

Sandoval undertook additional training in psychodynamic psychotherapy, and completed a long personal analysis with an International Psychoanalytical Association training analyst. That is an unusual depth of psychotherapeutic training for a general adult psychiatrist, and it shapes how he listens as much as what he prescribes.

He works to create a friendly, safe and supportive therapeutic environment, and builds treatment plans that are sustainable and matched to what a person actually needs and prefers.

Background and training

Sandoval is a Latin-American psychiatrist with 16 years of clinical experience as a consultant, primarily in New Zealand and Australia. He completed his psychiatry training in 2008 at two major university hospitals in Mexico, recognised by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists.

After three years in the private sector in Mexico, he moved to Auckland in 2011, where he spent six and a half years consulting in an adult community team. He moved to Melbourne in 2018 and consulted for two and a half years in an acute inpatient unit. Since 2021 he has consulted across inpatient and community public mental health services in Tasmania, Queensland, Western Australia and New South Wales.

Outside the clinic

Sandoval enjoys films, going for walks, and learning from the different people and communities he meets across Australia.