New tool to improve diagnosis of lifelong condition

New guidelines will help to reduce stigma and improve access to diagnosis and services for a lifelong disability in Australia, researchers say.

Arising from prenatal exposure to alcohol, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) can cause difficulties with attention, learning and memory, communication and behavioural and emotional regulation.

The condition was typically diagnosed in specialists clinics, often based in metropolitan areas and families faced long waits for an assessment, University of Queensland Child Health Research Centre senior fellow and clinical psychologist Natasha Reid said.

But after years of work, researchers, led by Dr Reid, have developed the first guidelines in the space to be approved by the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Dr Reid said she hoped the guidelines would mean more practitioners across the country felt comfortable to be involved in assessing the condition.

"These guidelines are of a really high standard," she told AAP.

"We hope what that means is that they're more trustworthy for clinicians and we'll have more clinicians who are wanting to take these guidelines into clinical practice.

"What that means for people with FASD is there's more access to services because that's still a challenge for a lot of people."

Researchers reviewed more than 300 research papers and consulted health professionals, cultural experts, families and carers of people with the disorder over a four-year period.

"The really challenging thing in this space is that internationally there's no agreed set of diagnostic criteria for FASD," Dr Reid said.

"So what we've tried to do here is really have evidence-based diagnostic criteria as part of these guidelines."

Dr Reid said having better access to diagnosis and assessment processes would reduce stigma and improve the lives of people with the condition.

"The primary use of these guidelines are for health professionals but we also hope the guidelines can provide information to people about what is involved in an assessment, and help raise more awareness," she said.

"A big thing we want to do is reduce stigma around FASD, making it so it doesn't matter where you go to access services, it can just be considered a part of routine assessments that are provided in those settings."

More than 40 organisations were involved in the development of guidelines.