Comments on BBC Panorama: Private ADHD Clinics Exposed

ADHDers are often more vulnerable than we realise. We frequently experience abuse, discrimination, and exploitation and it is important to hold any clinical service to account and ensure they meet the needs of patients. which appeared to be one of the aims of this programme.

I would very much like to see assessment for ADHD and support for ADHDers improved and offered within NHS services and for the NHS to offer much more holistic care, but recognise that there will always be a role for private provision too.

I believe that ADHD is underdiagnosed and that there is a missed generation of ADHDers, like myself, who were never diagnosed but have struggled. I believe we are seeing undiagnosed ADHDers and other neurodivergents in NHS Talking Therapy services presenting with recurrent depression and anxiety as well as other conditions and that staff would benefit from specialist training around this.

There is a desperate need for clinical research on neurodiversity affirming therapy and adaptations to psychological therapies for ADHDers. I firmly believe that future service development and research must have ADHDers centrally embedded within it, not just as patient experts by experience, but drawing on the insights and experiences of clinicians with lived experience of ADHD.

The Panorama programme, sadly, and perhaps unintendedly, reinforced outdated, dismissive narratives around ADHD built on stigma and myth. My diagnosis of ADHD helped me make sense of my life and this had a positive impact on my mental health. I use medication as it supports me to meet others’ expectations, within a world not designed for ADHDers, and this helps me not burn out as quickly under societal expectations not designed with ADHDers in mind.

One of the main reasons I sought assessment for ADHD was the hope others would be able to understand me better, but this has not been my experience. Since “coming out” I’ve had my diagnosis questioned by people in positions of power, been gaslit and perceived as deviant, disordered, defiant and defective. If anything the diagnosis appears to have encouraged others to correct me and my behaviour through shame and criticism. This is harmful, confusing, and disabling, reinforcing the damaging societal narrative that ADHDers are only acceptable if they don’t act like ADHDers, and are masking (if I mask really hard I could probably get a diagnosis of anxious/depressed neurotypical). I hope that one day I will be able to unmask and be recognised as the passionate, compassionate, creative and curious ADHDer that I am, that I will be able to come alive and be able to thrive.

It seems there is still a very long way to go before our society embraces neurodifferences, recognises neurodiversity as evolutionarily adaptive and openly works with individual strengths, allowing anyone to thrive and everyone to benefit. The programme’s focus on a different agenda meant that it missed an opportunity to support this much needed shift in our cultural understanding, instead potentially discouraging individuals from seeking assessment or sharing diagnosis, potentially, condemning them to a lifetime of damaging underachievement, shaming, masking and pain.

Let’s stop patronising, dismissing and shaming ADHDers. Let’s work with ADHDers to improve our NHS services and ensure they meet the needs of ADHDers with and without co-occurring conditions. Let’s work with ADHDers to make television programmes that tell the stories which really need to be heard.

By being different, together, we can thrive.