Patients, families and carers — FAQ

Maxwell Minds is an independent specialist medication consulting service for people navigating ADHD, autism and mental health medications. It is led by Penny Maxwell, consultant pharmacist, FANZCAP (Mental Health and Paediatrics). It sits outside the hospital system and has no pharmaceutical company relationships or institutional agenda.

Penny looks at the medication side of your care – and everything around it that affects whether it works. That includes how a medicine moves through your body, what the evidence says, how it interacts with other medicines or health conditions, what might be missing, whether treatment fits your life, whether it is safe, and whether it is as simple as it can be.

In practice that means different things for different people. For some it is education. For others it is navigation – working out what the system offers and what is genuinely possible. For others it is advocacy and facilitation – making sure your goals are heard and that you understand what your treating team is proposing. And for many it is collaboration – working alongside your treating team so everyone is operating from the same picture.

She does not prescribe or diagnose. All prescribing decisions remain with your treating clinician.

The medication side of ADHD, autism and mental health care is genuinely complex. Evidence keeps moving. Systems are hard to navigate. What works for one person rarely works for another. And the standard clinical encounter rarely has enough time to go as deep as complex situations require. Maxwell Minds exists to fill that gap – with specialist expertise, time, and genuine independence.

No. You can contact Maxwell Minds directly. If your doctor or specialist has referred you, that is also welcome. Either pathway works.

Sessions are focused conversations about your medication situation. The aim is to understand what is not working, what might be missing, and what needs attention – without reviewing your whole life history in one go.

Sessions come in three formats. A focused initial consultation runs 20 minutes – one clear question, one clear answer, written summary included. A standard working session is 60 minutes. A longer session runs 90 minutes and includes a 5 to 10 minute break in the middle.

A session is not the same as a comprehensive review. A review may involve one session or several. You decide the scope and the pace. Some engagements involve significant work between sessions – always discussed and agreed with you before it begins. No surprises.

No. You do not need to arrive organised, prepared or with a clear plan. That is part of what the session is for. Many people come feeling lost, exhausted or uncertain. That is fine. We start where you are. If you are all across it and have information ready, that is great too.

Yes. You can bring a partner, parent, family member, carer or whoever is important to you – to the whole session or part of it, whatever feels right. Getting to shared language and shared understanding within a family, chosen family or important relationship is just as important as the alignment between a patient and their treating team.

No. Penny is a clinical pharmacist, not a prescriber. She provides expert independent advice about medication – the options, the evidence, the interactions, the safety considerations, and how to get the most out of treatment for your specific situation. All prescribing decisions remain with your treating clinician.

No. Diagnosis sits with a medical practitioner. Penny works with whatever stage you are at – questioning, self-identified, or formally diagnosed – to support the medication side of your care. You do not need a diagnosis to come.

Penny Maxwell is a consultant pharmacist, FANZCAP (Mental Health and Paediatrics) – one of the first in Australia to hold both fellowships. She is lead author of the Child and Adolescent chapter of the Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines (8th edition) – the global reference text for mental health prescribing, translated into 19 languages. She wrote the Knowledge and Skills component of the SHPA Training Residency Framework for Mental Health – the official accredited advanced practice program for specialist mental health pharmacists across Australia. She has 23 years of frontline experience in mental health, paediatrics and ADHD. She has lived experience of late ADHD diagnosis and has personal reasons for the work she does.

Read more about Penny →

How a medicine moves through a body varies significantly between people. Genetics, other health conditions, other medications, age, gut health and many other factors can change how much of a medicine is absorbed, how it is broken down, where it goes, and how it leaves the body. This explains a lot of apparent treatment failures that were never actually failures – they were the wrong dose, the wrong form, or the wrong context for that person’s body.

MEDWISE is the clinical framework Penny uses to think about every patient’s medication situation. It works through seven dimensions – Movement (how the medicine moves through your body), Evidence, Drug interactions, What’s missing, Individual fit, Safety, and Efficiency. It is a structured way of making sure nothing important is missed. Not a checklist – the full depth of specialist pharmacist training applied to one person’s specific situation.

The Legacy Review is for people with a long or complicated medication history – particularly where multiple prescribers have been involved, trials have failed for unclear reasons, or no single clinician currently holds the full picture. It produces two documents: the Legacy Report and the Medication Portrait.

The Medication Portrait is the forwards look. It captures who you are in the context of your medication care – your beliefs and feelings about medication, the practical things that get in the way, what supports are already in place, and a guide for any future clinician who treats you. It is designed to travel with you so you never have to tell your whole story from scratch again.

It is a living document – updated as your situation evolves. It stays useful rather than becoming a snapshot that ages out.

Medicare: No. Maxwell Minds is not currently funded by Medicare. This kind of independent specialist service is genuinely new in Australia and funding has not yet caught up. We are working to change that.

NDIS: No. NDIS does not currently fund this type of service directly. If you have NDIS funding and want to explore whether any component might be claimable, the introductory call is the place to ask.

Private health insurance: Not currently for most funds. We are actively working on this. The relevant service type is independent specialist pharmacist consultation.

The fees reflect 23 years of specialist clinical training and the time required to do this work properly. A focused initial consultation is 50. All other services are 40 per hour billed in 15-minute increments. More complex services are scoped individually with pricing agreed before any work begins.

The most expensive treatment in this field is usually the wrong one or the missing one. That does not make the fee disappear – but it is part of the honest picture.

Maxwell Minds is not the right fit for every situation or every budget, and Penny will always tell you honestly if she does not think she can add meaningful value. The most useful starting point is the 20-minute initial consultation at 50 – a focused conversation about the single most important question. That is often exactly the right start.

This is one of the most common and most important concerns in this field. Penny takes it seriously – not as something to manage or argue away, but as something to understand properly.

The goal of medication in ADHD, autism and mental health is to help someone be more themselves – to be able to do what they want to do better, and to live the life they want to live. If it is working. Finding the right treatment is genuinely hard, and it does not always work that way. There are real uncertainties in this field and Penny will not pretend otherwise.

What that means specifically for you or your loved one is worth working through properly – not in a short answer, but in a real conversation.

That feeling makes complete sense after a long and difficult medication journey. Coming to Maxwell Minds is not about being promised a fix – it is about getting the clearest possible picture of what has actually been tried, what it means, and what might still be worth considering.

The evidence that medication helps many people with ADHD, autism and mental health conditions is real and often strong. A lot of what looks like treatment failure turns out to have been an inadequate trial. That is not failure. That is information. And information changes what is possible.

There are no guarantees. What there is, is a systematic, honest look at the full picture by someone who has seen a lot of these situations and knows where to look.

You are not. Lots of people feel a little embarrassed or find it hard to justify reaching out – like they should have this sorted already, or like their situation is not complicated enough to warrant proper attention, or like they are not sure they are allowed to want more than they have been given.

This is a safe space to explore what medication treatment means for you. You do not have to have it figured out before you arrive. You do not have to get it right. And you will not be judged for where you are starting from.

You do not need a well-formed question to book an appointment. Many people come knowing only that something is not right. Helping you work out what the actual question is, and where the real problem sits, is part of what the session is for. Arrive with whatever you have. That is enough.

That is exactly what the introductory call is for. Book a 20-minute call with Penny – no obligation, no preparation required. She will ask a few questions and tell you honestly whether Maxwell Minds is likely to help.