ADHD does not exist

I have fought and treble-fought the impulse to write about ADHD again. If it weren’t half term, I might even have won due to the pressure of other commitments. But whereas I have written reasonably before (see here and here), I am now going to jump off the fence and take sides. You have been warned!

We’ll start with the stream of thoughts pushing into my head: the times I have sat with my supervisor and railed against a child being taken for an ADHD assessment when there’s clearly something else going on; the times I have worked with someone “who may have ADHD” or who “can’t sit still and concentrate” (the implication being that they should be sent for assessment); or met with TAs who claim a client is “definitely ADHD” as if it’s unchangeably congenital. 

And then whooosh – in comes a tidal wave of lovely evidence from when I have worked with “ADHD-ish” children, including:

• one who can now concentrate for half an hour on a tedious, demanding self-imposed task, growing in stature on accomplishing it; 
• another who now waits patiently when turn-taking; 
• the one who is no longer distracted by the noise from above; 
• a child who has started talking slowly and coherently, allowing thinking breaks now that they’re sure of being listened to; 
• another who, having told an awful story of home life, settles into “normal” behaviour, knowing exactly where things are and being totally organised.

Did I “cure” them? Ha ha – I wish. 

The truth is, they never had ADHD. ADHD does not exist. It is a constructed “illness” to suit someone else. Possibly society, the government or the drug companies. 

So you can imagine how overjoyed I was to read Angela Southall’s book The Other Side of ADHD (I’ve put it in Hot off the Press) and to discover that she agrees with me (or more likely, I agree with her – she has greater experience, being head of a specialist children’s service). She reminded me that according to NICE, only psychiatrists and paediatricians can give diagnoses of ADHD and their view is through a medical lens. Psychologists, who are expert in human behaviour, can contribute information, but (she explains) this doesn’t change the disease-focus of the assessment.

I knew there was something going on. Southall explains the whole deal (social, philosophical, ethical, political, medical) that I had been finding hard to verbalise. She’s pushed me off the fence.

So here is my starter list of what we might, as counsellors, be looking to work with in therapy, before allowing someone else to jump for the Ritalin option (ie prescribe “speed”):

trauma
attachment difficulties
family circumstances (social and internal)
the emotional maturity of the child
parenting styles
unhappiness
abuse
loss etc

These items lead to stress and stress leads to all the so-called ADHD symptoms. We need a holistic approach that does not scapegoat the child and allows for the idea of an interchange between brain and environment in both directions without seeing ADHD as a bona fide brain disease needing medication. And we need to spread this message anywhere and everywhere before they process thousands more children at over £10 million a year (in England) and ruin even more lives.