Channel 4's 'The Great ADHD Myth?' is an Unbalanced Crock of Shit and Normal People with ADHD are Getting Splashed
This image is not out of context, the good doctor then says she would stop all medication for people who are currently medicated for ADHD
Please note this review of mine is not balanced or objective. It's entirely subjective, emotionally leading and full of spurious gesturing at unsubstantiated facts. Just like the show. If you want some real professionals' calm and measured opinion - check out this excellent write-up by group of doctors also check out the response from the charity ADHD UK. Consider filling out their survey and consider submitting an Ofcom complaint yourself if you saw this shitshow and agree with me that this shit can't fly.
This show, crowned by The Guardian as "The Most Controversial Show of the Year" certainly fulfilled its brief. Everybody's fucking talking about it, but for myself and the people I know with ADHD that's with a mix of anger, stress and gut-dropping disappointment.
I'm diagnosed with ADHD and have been dealing with it for my whole life. I've been asked about this show several times this week, but I didn't want to give it the eyeballs based on its adverts. Today, though, I decided to submit a complaint to Ofcom (the UK's broadcasting standards enforcement body) because if old ladies can complain about black people on TV I can complain about wanton misrepresentation of my lived experience. I wanted to do that properly though, so I had to sit through the whole fucking thing, and it's so much worse than I was expecting.
pot, kettle
Briefly: the show platforms the fringe beliefs of a small cabal of cranks who stalwartly stand in opposition to half a century of research and millions of adults diagnosed with this disorder worldwide who could tell you in no uncertain terms that exercise, diet and basket weaving aren't enough to deal with a core dose of ADHD. It can be bloody debilitating, and ADHD adults as a population are significantly more likely than their peers to be fired, arrested, suffering from addictions or even killed in car accidents. It seeps into every crease of your life and yet this show tries its damnedest to not just portray it as "the naughty boy disorder" - but outright concludes by saying that it's not a medical issue, and is just "difficult behaviours".
The core "experiment" focuses on a kid called Mason. Over the course of the show he's taken off his meds and simultaneously put on a regimen of good diet, good exercise, good sleep and less screen time. No longer taking a psychoactive medication, Mason feels more like himself. Going outside more and eating better, he feels better. I sincerely love that for him. ADHD medication isn't for everybody and lifestyle changes can go a long way to helping you deal with the symptoms, but the presenter then breathlessly extols this as proof that the issue wasn't ADHD after all, ergo ADHD isn't real. Surrounding a child with child psychology experts and improving their quality of life is obviously going to improve their mood and attitude. That's an argument in favour of good diet and exercise, not an argument against ADHD. And would you believe it, as soon as the cameras are off the new treatment plan falls apart. The end card where we see that Mason did, in fact, have to go back on his medication to keep up at school is just thrown in at the end with sad music as if to say "isn't it sad that this made up disorder destroyed this happy child?" and not "Maybe the conclusions drawn by the host of this show are not as broadly held or as well founded as this show is suggesting".
By the way, The Key Clinic who administer this "experiment"? They're an alternative medicine clinic. Their main treatment paths focus on vitamins, yoga and something like sound baths? White noise? Not sure
This "experiment" with a sample size of one is interrupted by talking heads from various medical experts who are in a minority of a minority who think ADHD isn't real and have written numerous op-eds for the British rags about it. About halfway through there was quotes being pulled from the DSM-5 to highlight how "vague" the diagnostic criteria are for ADHD. The DSM 5 is not a diagnostic tool, and it's not even used in the UK! It's the criteria used by American insurers to discriminate whether they cover care or not. That was mentioned at no point in the show. Even so, this exact same framing could be applied to any mood disorder in the DSM-5, such as clinical depression, and most neurodevelopmental disorders, such as Autism. Treating ADHD's diagnostic criteria as some unique exception in this regard is a knowing lie by omission.
The only expert shown with any integrity, Dr. Katya Rubia, stated after the show was aired that her statements were pulled out of context “My interview was hours long, and they cherry-picked the bits that suited their push for presenting ADHD as a myth,” Rubia told New Scientist. “Biased programs like this one that push their view of ADHD as a mythical entity are irresponsible and will have detrimental effects.”
In the show Dr. Rubia explains some ground truths about diagnosing mental conditions. Disorders are only disorders if they impact quality of life. Mental capabilities fall on a bell curve for everybody, not just those with diagnoses. Not everybody who is diagnosed with ADHD will have something that shows up under a brain scan. All obvious truths that the show presents as an argument that ADHD is somehow made up. Dr. Rubia even mentions that there IS a broad difference in the brain scans for the ADHD population vs their peers (albeit small, and potentially explained by environmental factors) to be immediately cut into a talking head saying there's no evidence at all for ADHD being a real disorder.
About halfway through the show our host decides that he too could be diagnosed with ADHD. I have no idea where or how this guy found a reputable clinic to diagnose him in half an hour. In my county the current wait to get assessed for ADHD under the NHS is 11 years. Perhaps because he told them he's doing it for a TV show? For me, it was a process of thousands of pounds passing hands, months of waiting, weeks of assessment and then months of titration. The same is true for everybody I know who managed to get their ADHD diagnosed. The official diagnosis requires testimonies from family AND the patient AND a teacher/employer AND that interview with a psychiatrist before you can even start being considered for medication. Our host doesn't find such realities align with his opinion so he just completely misrepresents the process instead. Even if you manage to get through months of appointments despite having a disorder that heavily impairs attention and organisational skills, if you don't have ADHD you will soon find out when you start micro-dosing methamphetamines! Which, it turns out, is precisely what happens at 28:16 where the presenter takes ADHD medication he knows he himself shouldn't really have qualified for to somehow prove that taking ADHD medication is dangerous. "We're giving this to ten-year-olds!" he quacks as he potters around London slightly high on somebody else's meds. Don't get me started on listing out the side effects for medication as if that's some kind of argument. Paranoia! Headaches! Poor Sleep! Yeah, man, it's medication what do you want?
Yeah no shit
The show has no balance, no opposing argument. Nothing. Throwing a carefully curated group of experts who sit within the minority opinion at us is just a knowing fabrication of broad medical agreement. It's clearly designed to get people to doubt ADHD diagnoses. It's disgraceful.
I want to say clearly here, that I'm not saying these people are entirely unqualified or that there are no issues around the diagnosis of ADHD. They are completely allowed to hold these beliefs, as much as I disagree with them. Hell, I'm mostly putting screenshots of them here just so I'm not plastering the blog with screenshots of some random kid. However, I think that putting this unbalanced a documentary on national TV about an INCREDIBLY sensitive medical topic that is by all accounts underdiagnosed and under-recognised in the UK is sheer dereliction of the duty of care by Channel 4 and by several of these experts.
I'm heartened at least to see that this isn't going unremarked upon by the British medical community. The BMJ has done a write-up of some of the push-back, and the CEO of ADHD UK was interviewed on Good Morning Britain to counter the doc
However, I feel like the damage has already been done. Weeks of adverts declaring ADHD is a myth have been seen in every home in the country. This has likely untangled years of effort to destigmatise the disorder. I wonder how many kids who could have been helped by proper medication will now never get the chance to judge for themselves. I wonder how many more days, months and years self-loathing and shame this program will be responsible for. I wonder, and I mourn for them.