Programme on ADHD this evening

Thus programme has been widely criticised for being biassed and the experiment with the child being of dubious validity as it was not properly drawn up and measured.

One of the experts on the programme has complained that what she said in interviews with the programme makers was cherry picked and quoted out of context h that she was shown as saying things that,in context, said other than that suggested by the programme makers.

I didn't see the programme. My neural diversity was diagnosed in the 1980s,when much less was known about it. Nevertheless I too think that there is a lot of over diagnosis and labelling in a very negative way.

Rather than racing to medication, I think far more effort should be put into showing children how to manage their disjointed minds. I learnt how to do this the hard way, not knowing what the over all problem was but knowing that I had problems. Once I understood the problem this became much easier.

While some adjustments can be made to accommodate children. We are all living in the one world that needs to function for almost everybody. We cannot have an individual world for each individual, because each individual world would be different and life would be intolerable.

With my own neurodivergent children, based on my own childhood experiences, I provided them with a lose framework of behaviour and expectations for them, this allowed a lot of flexibility, but also placed limits on behaviour that would cause major problems because if they knew if they broke them they would be in trouble. We also led a fairly regular pattern to life at home, mealtimes, getting up and going to bed times. Based on my own childhood, I think this is very helpful, again it is a part of the frame work.

We want our neuro-divergent to be able to grow up and be useful members of society and there needs to be understanding and cooperation by both the neurodivergent and those who work with them.

I am appalled when I hear of so many neuro-divergent people claiming benefits because of their neurodivergence, autism aside, I can see no reason why ADHD should make someone unable to work. We all of us have limitations and things we cannot do, we all just accept it and work round it.

My dyspraxia means I would never make it as a craftsman, or brain surgeon, or proofreader or typist, but DS was unable to consider any uniformed service, for a short period he considered following a family history of serving in the army because his eyesight is so poor.

Calendargirl

Eating unprocessed food, cutting out so much screen time and spending much more time outdoors seemed to be beneficial for the lad in the film, when not on his medication.

I wa brought up on a farm, didn't have a TV for years, hated to be indoors & ate practically no processed foood (even squash had to be diluted about 1/10 because my mum didnt like the idea of "chemicals" in it). I have ADHD, so does one of my sons & my Mum has deifinite traits although no diagnosis.

Gango

There are too many people looking for a label to excuse their behaviour.

I rest my case

There are too many people looking for a label to excuse their behaviour.

I have an adult child in his 40's who was only diagnosed with autism this year, it explains so many of his social difficulties in his early life - though he doesn't have ADHD. Personally I look upon his autism as another variation of the way humans deal with life, behave and react with each other, though I appreciate that some autism is much more severe than his.
I feel similarly about my adult daughter's ADHD which was diagnosed last year. It explains some difficulties she has had over her life, but was in no way a handicap during her early years. She lives a very busy life now and has found that the newly prescribed medication has made her life easier over the past year, but I don't believe it would have benefited her during her childhood.

I am looking forward to watching the programme later on. Personally, just from looking at Mumsnet threads, it seems as if almost all their children have either autism or ADHD. Perhaps it's just that parents whose children do have these conditions post more often.

saltnshake

Just a thought, could the modern diet be in part to blame? Food has so many additives now; what are the long term effects? I wonder about this as USA seems to have a very high number of children labelled as ADHD and it it one of the worst diets in the world for additives. As I say, just a thought.

I think this may contribute to the problem. Many parents nowadays don't know how to cook from scratch, and rely heavily on pre-packaged foods and takeaways.
Cookery used to be taught in schools but I don't know if it still is.

I think there are a number of issues colliding. One is the way many people question others' lived experience, and compound the felony by insisting that lived experience can only be 'validated' by experts. That is infuriating to those who know first hand what their lives are like.

Another is the assumption that if someone self-diagnoses they must be 'after something', and the way those making that assumption try to normalise experiences that don't fit a norm - thus ensuring that their own norms are never disrupted and those who are 'different' remain with a struggle, rather than looking for ways to normalise the people and making society easier for them to work within.

Then there is the fact that life - schools, workplaces, all sorts of things - rely on everyone doing things in much the same way, and that people have to be taught/socialised/bullied into conforming, so they learn to mask, and in many cases never reach their potential.

And the fact that there are numerous different agencies involved in diagnosis and treatment, and the profits that can be made from it, whether as salaries, medical intervention, research grants or whatever.

None of those things actually foreground the people with the conditions. I stand to gain nothing whether people believe me or not, as I'm retired and have learnt to deal with ADD, whether or not an expert tells me I have it, so I have nothing to lose either; but I know how very irritating it is to be told that we all have it in a greater or lesser form, or when the confidante turns the conversation into a discussion about whether they might have it too - they would know if they did.

It is unfortunate that the programme came across to some as denying the existence of problems for some children and adults. The title is typical media "click bait" - but I think it raised some important questions and it is legitimate to ask about the direction that ADHD diagnosis and treatment is going in.

Just to clarify - I spent most of my working life in hospitals and latterly 10 years in the role of specialist social worker for people with brain injuries and received a great deal of training on this. So I am not coming to it from a place of ignorance. I also worked for CAMHS for several years.

The social model of disability has been around a long time and was one that I called on a great deal in my practice. A characteristic that is part of a normal distribution can become disabling through interaction with a particular environment. So we might have a child with some of the characteristics that now come under the label of ADHD who functions fine outside of school but cannot deal with the school milieu. This is when the school environment needs scrutiny before there is any thought of medication.

Where does the pathology lie? With the child or with the school environment? Not always easy to answer of course, but both sides need to be examined.

The increase in diagnoses of ADHD may be for many reasons, some good, some bad. But the use of medication for children in order to make them fit in with a system that might itself be flawed is one that needs some thought.

The fact that schools now make adjustments for individual pupils with problems is good - akin putting in a lift for a child in wheelchair - but for me the increase in numbers begins to feel as though we might be asking too much of our children.

It is very hard for teachers to be asked to deliver a rigid system and then to have to make accommodations for a number of individual children who cannot cope with that. Maybe the children who do cope with it are the abnormal ones!? - just a thought ... I truly take my hat off to teachers with so much to contend with - the majority are doing their best against the odds and often at some detriment to their well-being.

Some children thrive at school and love it - often the girls who seem to be better able to deal with that environment; but some (like my DDs) just coasted their way through it seeing it as a necessary evil that they had to get through - they caused no trouble to anyone, but were glad to leave. And others really cannot cope with it at all - it is the wrong place for them.

I would like to see an acknowledgement that school simply does not suit come children, rather than treating them as though they are disordered - for it is in school that so many of these problems become their most acute.

When a child was presented to me with what used to be called "school refusal" my first move was to look at the school and ask why that environment was so hard to face.

Eating unprocessed food, cutting out so much screen time and spending much more time outdoors seemed to be beneficial for the lad in the film, when not on his medication.

ASD is a very different matter. It's sad to hear that the school did not introduce the well researched methods of educating children with ASD.
I've seen some schools do a brilliant job but that's usually been down to an individual teacher who really understands. I've also seen disgraceful practice.

Well said, Dreadwitch. It's the same with some of the comments by teachers who are sure when their charges have been diagnosed as ADHD and have been informed by their parents of that diagnosis.
My granddaughter's school teacher did the same with her ASD diagnosis so refused to make any reasonable adjustments for her. My DIL made a Freedom of Information request on her daughter's records where she found the teacher had suggested that Mum was the cause of the diagnosis. My grandaughter was actually suicidal at the time despite being only 6. Mum removed her from school and she has been home educated ever since. At 12 she is a much happier child who has a wider education than any other child that age. She attends clubs to socialise, home learning centres for work outside her parents' remit but all geared to her needs as someone who is ASD.
Let the medical professionals decide not someone with no training in the subject no matter how much they think they know.

There are comments on the Science Media Centre from professionals in the field, one of whom said "My own contribution to this programme has been largely misrepresented as my comments were cherry-picked, truncated and presented out of context to make them fit into the programme’s narrative that ADHD does not exist and there is no brain basis to the social construct".

You obviously didn't watch the programme

He was happier because he got to spend time with his family and do things he hadn't done previously, and he went back on meds because he obviously needs them.
Unfortunately as a social worker you have absolutely no medical knowledge so I can't imagine you know much at all about adhd, in fact your post proves that. You say its a social construct, presumably caused by too much screen time.. Yet that doesn't explain those people who had adhd long before screens, people who played outside all their childhoods and ate healthy food, didn't know what a computer was... How do you explain their adhd? Are you denying the lived experience of all the adults who have adhd and know it's got nothing to do with food, screens or anything else? Are you denying the science that's proved it's a genetic disorder and is visible on brain scans. Are you denying that they know 100% that it is a developmental disorder because they know parts of the brain develop at a slower rate?

I do find it strange how many people who don't have adhd or have no experience of it have such strong opinions about it, they'll claim it's cause by vaccines, screens not playing outside, too much processed foods etc, yet the science completely disagrees with you. How can you have such confidence in knowing something when you actually know nothing whatsoever?

Are you claiming that years of studying the subject and all the experts are wrong and you, a social worker with no actual knowledge is correct?

And how did people have adhd 40 years ago if its caused by screens and food?

All this program has done is set the stigma around adhd back 20 years overnight... Everybody is faking, Dr's are just diagnosing people for the fun of it, nobody needs medication because they just need to play outside and they'll be fine. Adhd doesn't really exist, it's a myth made up by someone for some reason the program didn't explain.

The fact that all the people being so vocal about this program are the ones who have little to no knowledge about adhd says it all really. And I imagine you only know about the basic symptoms of adhd and nothing at all about how complex it is, the comorbidities (that again have been proven to exist alongside adhd) and the distress it causes.

By denying the existence of something many people suffer from on a daily basis is cruel and disgusting. Imagine if people started saying cancer isn't real, would you accept that or would you show them the science that proves it exists?

Boadicea my daughter who is also very bright has just been diagnosed (in her early 40's), is now on medication and feels so much better.
She was never troublesome at school and was very bright, getting a place at a selective London independent girls school, but left before she took her A levels as she'd just had enough.
She's very generous and sensitive, is a foster carer, has adopted children as a single parent and has no problems finding well-paid employment but gets tired of them within a couple of years.
She would not have needed to be on medication as a child as she wasn't "troublesome" and I worry about the effect these very strong drugs are having on children whose bodies and brains are still developing.

The number of people now being medicated because they don't fit the mold required is so high now. There seems to be a need to label everybody and everything these days rather than teach them coping methods to deal with every day life. I thought the programme was interesting and informative.

Luckygirl3

Mamie

I would say the child is back on medication because it makes it easier for him to learn.

There is of course the important question about what and how children learn.
They are all subject to the narrow curriculum and aims of our current system.
Does learning this take precedence over a child's well-being? Does it justify medicating a child?
Would it be legitimate to also ask whether the school system might also be a factor? The idea that the meds make it possible for him to learn presupposes that what and how he is being asked to learn is not open to scrutiny.
Many teachers are frustrated by the whats and hows of what they are being asked to teach and would like the flexibility to respond to the needs of the pupils as they really are.

Yes, well said and I agree. Teachers are being forced to deliver a narrow curriculum which does not always suit all children. Also, schools don't have the resources or the staff to meet the needs of some children who find learning difficult however much they might want to!

Autism is certainly not man made and there are no drugs for autism.

I did read, many years ago that the Americans had created new illnesses, in order to create drugs to deal with the problem. Berevement was one of them. Something that is so normal should not be treated with drugs in order to make money for the drug companies. So how do we know that ADHD, Autism ect are not man made illnesses in order to make money for the drug companies?. We are all different and e veryones brain works in it's own way, there is no one size fits all brain.

Hear hear ,we are medicalising normal behaviour, it’s a crime to use pharmaceutical coshes , on our children,
Has any one looked into the payments made via benefits for the diagnosis of ADHD ?

I was a secretary to a Child Psychiatrist when ADHD was becoming a thing. He didn't accept it, refused to prescribe medication and believed that everyone has, to a greater or lesser degree, some aspects of ADHD, ADD, ASD and OCD, and always has had.

I do not feel competent to comment on whether those who have ADHD should or should not be taking medication.

As a retired teacher, I can and will say, that many of the children, I suddenly was told had ADHD probably did not, others did of course.

BUT and this is a big but, both groups of children benefited greatly when my colleages and I took a couple of minutes to check that these children understood what they where supposed to be doing in class or for homework. It was no use just writing the homework up on the board - you had to make certain that the individual child had written it down in their notebook. Likewise, when telling the class en bloc to do such and such, please, you then had to say, "Annie, are you with me?"
No, she wasn't, as a collective direction just went over her head, but she knew perfectly well what to do, when I quietly drew her attention to what we were doing.

Teaching, irrespective of whether children or adults, you HAVE to make sure that everyone knows and understands what you are talking about, what they should be doing, all the time.

ADHD children need clear guide-lines, and once you have found what works with each of these children: stick to it - don't vary the wording, as this confuses the child.

I have had a great interest in ADHD for many years as it runs through the males in my family. Call it what you want but the symptoms are very real and cause utter devastation for them and the whole family, it's heartbreaking.
Medication can help get them through school and exams but makes them feel horrible, zombiefied and unable to eat. Usually they refuse medication as they get older.
Physical exercise and lots of it does help.
The department of education needs to step up and put things in place for these children and young adults.
Unfortunately it can and does continue into adulthood with impulsivity and raging outbursts.
Very very sad.

Luckygirl3

*It is the things the ADHD brain doesn't do well that makes up the negative side of things. Those are the things that medication assists with.*

How does the medication selectively deal with the negatives whilst retaining the positives?

The stimulants don't damp down the things you are good at but they do help with your brain where you need stimulation to do things you find harder. Somebody once described it to me as one of those snow globes. The snow globe when shaken has snow leaping about everywhere and doesn't settle. ADHD people have the sort of brain where their thoughts are everywhere. Neurotypical people have the type of snow that gets shaken but settles. The medication helps settle the swirling snow.
So a positive attribute of ADHDers is that they can be obsessive about a subject but can't necessarily put everything they know into a coherent narrative. Give them the medication and they are more easily able to do that because they don't lose the interest in the subject just because they are taking the medication. Bright non-achievers stand a chance of being bright achievers. It may be that in order to complete a task, having lots of thoughts going in all different directions means you don't do anything because you get overwhelmed but the medication quietens those thoughts so you can.
I was very anti being medicated but although stimulants make me feel tense and aggressive, I was much more productive. I am hoping the non-stimulants will have a similar effect but without the tension.