‘Part of a wider attack on disabled people, designed to sow distrust and division’
David Thomas
The producers of the C4 ‘documentary’, ‘The Great ADHD myth?’ may be satisfied that courting controversy has helped boost their TV ratings. However, it has left the community of people – young and old – struggling through life with the mentally exhausting effects associated with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), anxious and angry that such a shoddy piece of journalism was broadcast, supposedly in the interests of ‘stimulating public debate’.
Denying the reality of ADHD
The programme centres on the struggles of a stereotypically hyperactive schoolboy, Mason. However, ADHD presents itself in many different ways. Symptoms include an inability to focus on and prioritise tasks, impulsive behaviour and severe disorganisation.
Of course, these are all behaviours that many people can exhibit to some degree, as the show went to great lengths to stress. But that’s true of the symptoms of many complex health conditions. However, in denying the reality of ADHD, the show belittles its sufferers and fails to explain how the severity of their symptoms can massively impair their lives. This is particularly true for women, who more often mask their symptoms, and can be linked to severe emotional distress and self-harm.
The programme’s presenter, Max Pemberton, tried to present himself as just a psychiatrist in search of the truth. In fact, he is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail who also took part in the media onslaught on Jason Arday.
He sets out to prove that ADHD symptoms don’t arise from a genuine neurodevelopmental disorder but are just an invented ‘social construct’. However, no specialist in the field is given an opportunity to explain why the overwhelmingly accepted medical consensus opposes his false claims.
Manipulative experiments
Much of the programme is taken up with ‘experiments’ conducted by Pemberton, clearly designed to arrive at the result he’d already decided upon in advance. The first, conducted on the 10-year-old Mason, consisted of stopping his course of ADHD medication. Instead, a range of other strategies were tried, which seemed to improve his symptoms. However, as so many variables were changed at once, a GCSE student could tell you that it would be impossible to draw an accurate conclusion as to cause and effect! They included factors that might have some benefits to young people in general but genuine research has shown has little to no link with ADHD – such as cutting down screen time and eating less processed and sugary food.
Pemberton then takes ADHD medication for himself with predictable results. He has already prepared the ground for his theatrics by having an ‘expert’ erroneously comparing it to taking addictive cocaine. But the effect of stimulant drugs on someone with the brain chemistry of someone with ADHD isn’t the same as for the general population. That’s the whole point!
Without any alternative points of view being presented, its arguments might seem plausible to some. For example, the Guardian immediately gave the show a positive four-star review. Tellingly, however, they quickly had to add two corrections to their original article, both of which exposed Pemberton’s manipulative misinformation.
Firstly, they had to point out that Mason ended up back on medication. Mason’s struggles weren’t as easy to solve as Pemberton was claiming. Worse, it turns out that the words of one of the experts interviewed, Katya Rubia, were, in her words, “cherrypicked… and presented… out of context to make them fit into their narrative”.
The drug companies
Millions of working-class people suffer, physically and mentally, from the pressures of life under capitalism. Meanwhile the drugs companies and privatised health industry directly profit from the misery inflicted by their system. It’s understandable, therefore, that there is a suspicion – aired in the programme – that the increase in ADHD diagnosis is simply driven by their search for profits.
Of course, there’s always a danger of overdiagnosis in the pursuit of private profit. But the reality for most people is underdiagnosis, thanks to long waiting lists and many Integrated Care Boards refusing to fund assessments. At the same time, ADHD is already one of the conditions with the highest failure rate for PIP assessments.
The show also unhelpfully used emotive terms like comparing ADHD medication to a ‘chemical cosh’, as if they were being misused to subdue rather than assist people. Of course, prescribed drugs can never provide more than a partial solution. Official advice correctly states that they should be administered as part of “a comprehensive, holistic shared treatment plan.” After all, ADHD presents differently for different people and may form only one aspect of an individual’s overall health condition. But providing detailed individual diagnosis, therapy and support requires a lot of resources. And resources are precisely what the NHS is being starved of.
Some of the issues thrown in by Pemberton as possible causes of ADHD are undoubtedly very real factors undermining people’s health and wellbeing in general. These include parents not having time to spend with their families, the unhealthiness of urban environments, and an underfunded inflexible school system driven by exam targets.
A socialist solution to improving working-class health would involve a systemic change to working-class lives, and the nature of both work and education. It would also include a fully nationalised and democratically run health service, where the profit motive was removed from drug research and diagnosis. It would be funded to fully meet everyone’s needs, not just those who can afford to pay. But even those changes wouldn’t mean that conditions such as ADHD, with genuine neurodevelopmental causes, would simply disappear.
Serving a pro-cuts agenda
The misinformation peddled in this programme has nothing to do with helping people with ADHD, and the Daily Mail certainly won’t be proposing the nationalisation of the drugs industry! No, its real purpose was to dismiss
ADHD as not being a genuine condition, to help prepare the ground for massive cuts in public spending across health and welfare budgets. Reform UK may have been the most blatant in announcing that they would make cuts of £50 billion, but, whoever is Chancellor, that’s what they’ll be told needs to be done.
It’s no coincidence that the Department of Health and Social Care has already rushed through a review “into overdiagnosis of mental health and neurodivergent conditions”, as part of the Timms Review due to report in the Autumn. It’s part of a wider attack on disabled people, designed to sow distrust and division. It’s an agenda that trade unionists and socialists must vociferously challenge, including by answering the misinformation in this dangerous programme.
- ‘The Great ADHD myth?’ is available to stream online channel4.com
