The programme, titled The Great ADHD Myth?, was broadcast on Tuesday and its host, NHS psychiatrist Dr Max Pemberton, concluded it was "a social construct, not a disorder of the brain". ADHD UK filed a complaint, saying: "ADHD is not a myth. It is not a social construct."
The Royal College of Psychiatrists also warned against "invalidating the condition".
Understandably, they have a business to protect.
Channel 4 defended the show, saying there is "considerable public debate on various aspects of ADHD" and it "is legitimate for that debate to be explored and for conventional understandings to be challenged".
Once it would have been, but in 2026 that can be a risky business, as one professor has since found out.
Another charity, ADHD Embrace, raised concerns with Channel 4 in advance, warning the programme risked "perpetuating misinformation about ADHD as a condition and discrimination against those families whose lives have been severely impacted by the condition".
But Channel 4 was not to be cowed...
Channel 4 said: "Whilst the film does not seek to provide answers from one family's experience, their experiences have opened up discussion around whether today's world is equipped to accommodate ADHD behaviours and the ethics of medicating these, particularly in children and particularly when the long-term effects remain unknown."
Meicating children with little thought to the long term conseqequrances seem to be the way forward these day, that door has been well and truly opened.
Diagnosis rates of ADHD and autism have soared, and waiting lists for assessments on the NHS in England are at record levels, with lists even closing in some areas due to the huge demand. Research from University College London suggests nearly a 20-fold increase in the number of UK adults diagnosed with ADHD between 2000 and 2018.
Reduce the benefits and allowances associated with it if you want to see rates fall.
9 comments:
I know it's a cliché but when I attended school in the 1960s and 1970s the ADHD medication was applied to your behind.
Stonyground.
Incentives matter. If parents can get more resources for their problem child (or not so problem child) by getting him/her diagnosed with a disability, some parents will take advantage, won't they?
Have a listen to Sir Ken Robinsons short talk on this subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dUNWW2D3BM
I suspect that there are real cases of ADHD but most of the identification is just fashion. I don't mean to disparage peoples' experiences but whenever I see massive increases in numbers I wonder what is driving the incidence. Same with trans issues, some real cases and a lot of fashion.
And if you think fashion can't be that powerful I'll point to the waves of political correctness we have had, or even the widespread smoking of cigarettes, now much reduced. Or snuff.
"Reduce the benefits and allowances associated with it if you want to see rates fall. "
This.
The subject of smoking came up when I was with My In Laws the other day. Now in their eighties, they recalled a time when almost everyone smoked and thought that you were weird if you didn't.
Stonyground.
ADHD, more correctly named BBLB, Badly Behaved Little Bastard.
Growing exponentially with soft parenting and the discipline-free I-know-my-rights evreee-chuyyyyuld-is-speshhhuuull schooling.
Also, far too many vested interests reputational, pharmaceutical and financial to stop the runaway train.
Imagine the collapse of similar charities, hospices, funding should a simple cheap cure, or off-label treatment for many cancers be discovered. It would be covered up, and the discoverers and users attacked, ridiculed and gaslit for "misinformation", especially if said treatment was out of patent, so no fabulous profits and reputations to be made.
Why does the Great Covid Con keep resurfacing when thinking about this.
This being a field in which I have extensive professional and personal experience, I’ll stick my head above the parapet and say that I take issue with a) lumping hyperactivity together with attention deficit and b) the term ‘disorder’, which is a hallmark of the ever-burgeoning DSM and inevitably tied up with the pursuit of pharmaceutical solutions.
Hyperactivity is generally present from birth and usually associated with infant colic and sleep problems as well as restlessness, tantrums and impulsive behaviour (the fact that there is a significant correlation with migraines in later life argues against Max Pemberton’s hypothesis). Hyperactive children are, however, generally capable of concentration and focus as long as they are assisted to develop coping strategies and given clear parameters for behaviour (or, in a very few cases, given minimal medication).
Unfortunately the effects of poor or inconsistent early years parenting, sometimes compounded by the effects of prenatal exposure to alcohol or drugs, can present in a very similar fashion by the time the child reaches school age.
There is no need for any of this to be linked to benefits - far more effective to channel resources into specialist teaching (and training for school staff) - and labelling a child as having a ‘disorder’ is surely, in many cases, distinctly counterproductive.
Well said. The problem as it stands, is that schools and indeed the medical profession get bonuses for "identifying and diagnosing" various syndromes and conditions.
Take the matters of obesity and diabetes, where doctors get a payment per patient identified.
Look at the vaccine bonuses for the Great Covid Con.
Imagine the scandal of it was reported that mechanics were paid a bonus for every extra job on a customer's vehicle with no way of the customer knowing if it was real or bogus...
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