Controversy over ADHD Documentary Misses the Point
ADHD is back in the news again, thanks to the brouhaha over the recent piece by Panorama reporter Rory Carson titled “I Don’t Have ADHD, but Three Private Clinics Say I Do.” After being thoroughly examined by an NHS consultant psychiatrist and assured that he did not, in fact, have this disorder, Carson was able to obtain this diagnostic label, along with prescriptions for stimulant drugs, at three different private clinics – after a brief consultation, and for a hefty fee.
The British not-for-profit ADHD Aware issued a statement expressing its “extreme disappointment” regarding the piece. The National Scot demanded an apology for the “sensational” documentary. And BBC presenter Adrian Chiles, who has been very public about his own struggles with this supposed disorder, warned us the piece might increase the “stigma” supposedly surrounding this diagnostic label.
BTW, five years ago, Chiles hosted the BBC doco “Drinkers Like Me,” in which he revealed that he drinks one hundred units of alcohol every week. That’s the equivalent of two and half cases of beer. If I drank two and a half cases of beer a week, I think I’d have problems with attention, too. But never mind that for now.
All this tends to obscure the fact that there is no convincing evidence that such an entity as “ADHD” even exists. After decades of research, there still is no biomarker or genetic test for this condition. And how could there be? There are literally hundreds of reasons why any given child, or adult, might experience problems with inattention or hyperactivity. How could there be a common neural substrate, or a common gene, for all these disparate problems? Far better to identify the source of an individual’s complaints and address that, than to attribute that individual’s distress to some mythical disease entity, the existence of which has never been demonstrated.
Chiles trots out a familiar straw man argument:
Many lives are blighted by undiagnosed and untreated ADHD. It will often lead to chronic underachievement at school, in the workplace and relationships, and to generally terrible decision-making in every aspect of life. Self-medication often leads to addiction issues. Those with ADHD are vastly over-represented in the prison population. Suicide rates are appallingly high among men and women with ADHD.
Well, yeah. No one gets the label “ADHD” unless his behavior is deemed a problem by somebody. You are looking for trouble in a population you already know is troubled. As author Martin Whitely points out, this is like betting on which horse will come in last in the race – after the race is already finished.
And as always, no evidence that stimulant drugs reduce the likelihood of any of these bad outcomes.
Chiles also discusses his own struggles with this supposed disorder, in this poignant passage:
What I can say is that for an awfully long time I found my life heart-stoppingly, nerve-shreddingly difficult, as I veered wildly between the thrill of it all, and the crippling anxiety and depression.
Sounds like the eminent television personality was actually suffering from a disease known as “being human.” I can relate. We all feel that way from time to time. What of it?
If becoming a better person is a matter of taking the right pills, then just about everything I think I know about being human must be wrong. But that can’t possibly be the case. If becoming a better person were a matter of taking the right pills, we wouldn’t be here discussing it. We’d all be taking the pills. There is no way you could keep something like that a secret.
Decades of controlled studies have yet to yield any evidence that drugging children or adults for something called “ADHD” results in any long-term benefits. It’s time to move on.
Take any drug you want, Mr. Chiles. But the rest of us shouldn’t have to pay for it. And NO child should be given these dangerous and highly addictive drugs.
My book, Obedience Pills: ADHD and the Medicalization of Childhood, is available on amazon.