ADHD should not be treated as a disorder
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. NOT LONG ago, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was thought to affect only school-aged boys—the naughty ones who could not sit still in class and were always getting into trouble. Today the number of ADHD diagnoses is rising fast in all age groups, with some of the biggest increases in young and middle-aged women.
The figures are staggering. Some 2m people in England, 4% of the population, are thought to have ADHD, says the Nuffield Trust, a think-tank. Its symptoms often overlap with those of autism, dyslexia and other conditions that, like ADHD, are thought to be caused by how the brain develops.
All told, 10-15% of children have patterns of attention and information-processing that belong to these categories. At the moment, ADHD is treated as something you either have or you don’t. This binary approach to diagnosis has two consequences.
The first is that treating everyone as if they are ill fills up health-care systems. Waiting lists for ADHD assessments in England are up to ten years long; the special-needs education system is straining at the seams. The second consequence occurs when ADHD is treated as a dysfunction that needs fixing.
This leads to a terrible waste of human potential. Forcing yourself to fit in with the “normal" is draining and can cause anxiety and depression. The binary view of ADHD is no longer supported by science.
Researchers have realised that there is no such thing as the “ADHD brain". The characteristics around which the ADHD diagnostic box is drawn—attention problems, impulsivity, difficulty organising daily life—span a wide spectrum of severity, much like ordinary human traits. For those at the severe end, medication and therapy can be
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