Maybe no one is saying its fake.
But plenty of people are saying 'oh everyone is jumping on the bandwagon and its not that bad really and they are trying to milk the system for PIP or whatever'.
The entire PREMISE of the programme was to say, that theres a bunch of bullshitters out there and we need to do something about how ADHD is trendy and thats why the private sector are cashing in. With absoluetely no context or detail on WHO and WHY people are turning private. Or why it might not be bloody social media and why women in particular might be having a penny drop NOW rather than 10 - 15 years ago. (Lets go there: wider awareness in schools leading to kids being diagnosed, which in turn leads to the penny drop with parents and recent changes in understanding how ADHD presents differently in women which weren't recognised / taken seriously just a few years ago).
What the FUCK do you think the effect the programme has had on vulnerable people who ALREADY have self confidence issues, anxiety, facing an uphill struggle in the NHS which is full of dinosaur GPs and rampant sexism as well as the whole budget over patient well being dynamic.
Or are you going to deny there is a problem and that the numerous people on twitter who have said their shared cared plans have been cancelled / blocked by their GPs this week since the programme aired are just straight up liars and charlatans?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/commentisfree/2023/may/18/no-adhd-is-not-a-con-if-thats-the-message-you-got-from-panoramas-expose-you-werent-paying-attention?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Adrian Chiles nails it:
Panorama could hardly have made it clearer that while a handful of private clinics may be guilty of misdiagnosing ADHD, that doesn’t mean that ADHD itself isn’t a serious, debilitating condition. But if you’ve been a sceptic all along, or weren’t watching carefully enough, or you didn’t watch at all and merely half-heard or half-read something about the BBC programme, then you might well be the person who says to me: “Turns out it’s all a con, then.”
To be clear, it isn’t. 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. And these are overwhelmingly the kind of people who will wait for ever for diagnosis on the NHS and are extremely unlikely to have a grand to spare for a consultation at a private clinic, good or bad. This is an unfolding tragedy about which I’m available to make a Panorama show any time they care to ask.
AND
The worst thing, in terms of the stigma around ADHD, is that we’re in danger of coming full circle. In the beginning it was a disorder with which no adult wanted to be labelled. It was something that particularly naughty schoolkids supposedly had. Then it became better understood. Those who could pay the money got the care they needed and sang hosannas about it. So the stigma slowly dissipated and demand for treatment rose. With drearily depressing inevitability some businesses saw a trough into which to put their snouts and, for a healthy price, hand out dodgy diagnoses. People see this is happening and so conclude that the whole thing is at best a bit of a craze and at worst a con. And before we know it, those with ADHD, or who think they might have it, are subject to a new, virulent variant of the stigma and shame we started out with in the first place.
Imagine being in their position, like a young woman I know in the same business as me. She’s pretty sure it’s ADHD that is making her life so miserable and wants to address it. With no hope of an NHS appointment any time soon, she has scraped together more money than she can sensibly spare to go private. So now she’s stuck between the NHS, which can’t help, and an expensive private consultation she possibly can’t rely on. “I just feel I’m now in this awful dilemma. Going private should be an easy, albeit very expensive, solution, but now people might dispute the diagnosis anyway,” she says.
YOUR COMMENTS ARE WHAT STIGMA LOOKS LIKE.
YOURS
There are others on the thread guilty of it, but yours in particular are deeply fucking unhelpful to put it politely. To put it less politely, massively bloody insensitive, ignorant, at times rude, completely missing the point, dogmatic and pushing a narrative which WILL lead to others being harmed in its own right.
I don't think there's a doubt that there are some people being wrongly diagnosed privately with ADHD. The issue is all about context and the way this programme has handled that subject and taken the issue back years at the same time as there is such a huge backlog within the NHS which is blighting people's lives because they can't get access to APPROPRIATE CARE and NOW they have to go back to justifying themselves even more (something that someone with problems with executive functions is going to struggle with in the first place). That WILL cause mental health harms in their own right.
This subject could have been approached in a MUCH MUCH better way. Instead its not just caused a car crash. Its a multi car pile up.