Edmonton is about to add a major new player to Canada’s ADHD care landscape: the Neuro Wise Edmonton ADHD Centre, which advertises comprehensive assessment and support services for children, teens, and adults, and has scheduled a grand opening for February 2026.

For many families, the expansion is welcome. Long waits for diagnosis and patchy access to adult services have made ADHD care uneven across regions. But the opening is also fueling a familiar national argument: are diagnoses “exploding” because ADHD is being over-medicalized, or because health systems are finally identifying people who were previously missed?

Canadian evidence suggests a more complicated reality than either slogan. A major review of Canadian data found diagnosed prevalence estimates varying by province and method, with one cross-provincial estimate around 8.6% in children/youth and 2.9% in adults, broadly consistent with international ranges. CADDRA guidance similarly places ADHD prevalence in roughly the 5–9% range for children/adolescents and 3–5% for adults, and notes that media narratives of simple overdiagnosis are not strongly supported by long-term meta-analytic trends.

At the same time, Ontario administrative-data work has shown rising recorded prevalence in youth over recent years, suggesting that case detection, diagnostic pathways, awareness, and service access are all changing at once.

That is why Edmonton’s new centre matters beyond one city: it reflects a shift toward lifespan ADHD care, where diagnosis is tied not only to medication decisions but also to psychological assessment, coaching, school/work supports, and comorbidity management.

The real fault line is no longer “ADHD is real” versus “ADHD is hype.” It is whether Canada can scale high-quality, evidence-based assessment without turning neurodivergence into a one-size-fits-all label—or leaving genuine patients untreated. In that tension, demand is rising faster than public trust, and Edmonton has become a new front line in the country’s brain-health debate.