AIBU to think this BBC response to complaints about the ADHD exposed programme on Panorama is inadequate

[waronadhd]

disclaimer: I am one of the people who has complained.

BBC recently responded to complaints made about the episode of Panorama called ADHD Private Clinics Exposed, where a journalist got diagnosed with ADHD by three private clinics, but not by an NHS assessment done by a consultant.

Their response:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaint/panoramaprivateadhdclinicsexposed

AIBU to think this is not good enough? They sent a generic response to a much-complained about programme, and did not address my main gripes with it, which is about factually misrepresenting the NHS.

As mentioned by others, NHS Tees, NHS Esk, and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation all say that an adult ADHD assessment can take between 1-2 hours. Meanwhile North West London NHS Foundation Trust says an assessment can up to 90 minutes. This is not 3 hours, as the programme claims is what is necessary for a good assessment, implying that private clinics fall short of a target that is standard in the NHS.

The BBC also love to mention high rates of diagnosis in the private sector, but there are NHS clinics with much higher rates of positive diagnoses (95% at one clinic for example). Panorama is claiming that this programme has not resulted in any additional stigma for ADHD sufferers, but I don't think this is true at all. There have already been stories online of shared care being withdrawn.

In some parts of the country (Yorkshire for example) you cannot even get assessed for ADHD as an adult at the moment, unless you are acutely in danger of self-harm or harming others. This includes scenarios involving children with ADHD ageing out of childhood services and suddenly losing access to the medication they rely on when reaching 18.

This programme had the potential to highlight all the issues and failures in care that are happening in the UK regarding adult ADHD, in both the private sector and the NHS. Instead it presented a biased report of shoddy private clinics and an exemplary NHS service that is simply a bit overstretched, giving rise to even more stigma and negative attention to a disorder which is under diagnosed in women as is. I think it's depressing that the response to the complaint talks about people not enjoying the programme, completely ignoring the questions about factual accuracy and potential damage caused.

think it’s a real shame that we’ve had several good documentaries on autism (Christine McGuiness, Chris Packham) really trying to increase understanding and all I’ve seen on ADHD is stuff minimising and rubbishing it.

I haven’t seen the show but I read an article about it and it’s not helpful, not insightful and not what adults or kids struggling with ADHD need - it’s a free pass to sneer.

The BBC always responds in a patronising defensive manner to any criticism.

My local NHS Adult ADHD clinic does 3 hr assessments.

Hasn’t anyone ever wondered why there was no such thing as ADHD or ADD before Ritalin was invented? In fact there are an awful lot more disorders and the like being diagnosed to fuel an ever burgeoning prescription drug market. For instance Personality Disorders were only invented in either 1981 or 1986 and guess which drug to treat it miraculously appeared then.

Except that is not true at all. The first descriptions of children exhibiting ADHD-type symptoms date from about 1798, though back then it was referred to as a defect of moral control, possibly resulting from brain damage.

Also, how long it has been since something became officially named and recognised as a disorder is not linked to its validity. Autism as it is known today only became an official diagnosis in 1943 (around the same time Ritalin was invented), is that fake too? More and more people are being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and at a younger age due to advances in medical knowledge. Is this problematic to you?

I never said that none of the NHS clinics do 3 hour assessments, just that many don't, and that the BBC has falsely claimed that NHS assessments are 3 hours long across the board, regardless of trust.

In some parts of the country (Yorkshire for example) you cannot even get assessed for ADHD as an adult at the moment, unless you are acutely in danger of self-harm or harming others

And this is why NHS diagnoses rates appear to be so high, because the threshold to get anywhere near an assessment is high- it's self selecting really. Compared with someone logging onto a website, paying some £ and then having a sub optimal video chat. Sure some private clinics are not out solely to make money, but the issue is some are and rely on people keen to find for answers and willing to spend £££s on doing so combined with people being desperate because they can't access NHS services; it's a very lucrative business.

I watched the documentary and didn't feel it minimised ADHD, but was critical of businesses diagnosing people on what is usually an assessment that falls far short of clinical guidelines. It's important vulnerable people aren't taken advantage of.

I agree.

Nonsense.

Personality disorders also weren't 'invented' and there is currently no drug to treat them.

Is it so difficult to understand that an illness becomes more widely understood when there is a treatment for it?

regardless of the documentary’s nuance, the headline and take home of this will be read as look at all these fake ADHD diagnoses…I look forward to the companion documentary documenting the daily struggles of adults and children on the waiting list.

"Professor Marios Adamou, who is the longest serving consultant psychiatrist treating adult ADHD in the NHS, told the Today programme on 15th May that 50 per cent of diagnoses from private clinics turned out to be incorrect when they were checked by his specialist ADHD service"

This is far more worrying than I thought. 50%!!!

You genuinely believe people 'made up' conditions as opposed to learned more about the complex human?

@Colourfingers2 see also, no autism until the MMR was invented… idiot.

You can't expect them to respond to every complaint individually. Who has the resource for that?

What an ignorant comment. You clearly have no idea about ADHD.

From the Times about the panorama:

’To be sure, there are some potential problems with the programme’s methodology. In contrast to the three private clinics featured by Panorama, which, before giving Carson a diagnosis for ADHD, were unaware that he was making a television programme, the NHS consultant who gave Carson a detailed in-person assessment knew he would feature in a documentary. Which prompts the question: would Carson have received the same thorough NHS assessment had there been no cameras present? Or would he have experienced another “tick-box” exercise like the one he experienced through the private clinics? We can’t possibly know.’

It still wouldn't change the experience of the other appointments though. Sure the medical professional may have an agenda to go out of his way to say he doesn't have ADHD as he is pushing the agenda that these clinics invariably over diagnose, but seems fairly unlikely and again wouldn't change the other apps. The bigger issue if there is any at all I suppose is with the edit. The private apps were shown to be pretty light touch, short and stuff but we don't know what he told them (whether it was equal to what he told the NHS app) and the content of the appointment- were the 'decent' bits cut out. As always with Panorama they always have a viewpoint before they start that they try and prove rather than being impartial, there should be some impartial investigations though.

But we have no idea if the nhs appointment was representative and they were on notice they were being filmed and for a documentary. The NHS is being held up as an (inaccessible) gold standard when they had inside information.

the whole thing smells and is rotten biased journalism and a wasted opportunity to do something better.

Did the reporter know that he did not have adhd before the programme was aired, and if so, how did the original assessment compare to the NHS one that was shown on air?

Or if he hadn’t been assessed before the first nhs assessment, what was the reason for making the programme, and did this change as it went on?

there was no such thing as ADHD or ADD before Ritalin was invented?

@Colourfingers2

How can you be sure that there was no such thing, rather than simply no diagnosis ?

I can completely follow your logic: the availability of a drug to treat would indeed follow the definition as a disorder. I'd like to understand how that can be distinguished from the absence of the undiagnosed condition.

Given the difficulty of proving that something doesn't exist, it would be good to understand your confidence in your opinion.

I agree that we need to protect vulnerable people, and I am not in principle against naming and shaming clinics that are not up to scratch. What I don't agree with however, is how this documentary represents this issue.

The problem is that this isn't the same scenario as (for example) a vulnerable person falling for a phone scam, where removing the opportunity for the scam to occur resolves the issue. If Panorama is claiming that they have made this documentary to make sure that vulnerable people aren't being taken advantage of, they should have addressed the real problem:

People are so desperate for help that they are willing to fork out £1000s of pounds on a potentially unsafe experience because the NHS is currently either incapable or unwilling to help them, and their only alternative is to be seen privately. If this was about protecting vulnerable people, there would be a focus on what can be done to fix the issues with getting diagnosed accurately and receiving appropriate help. Instead, the only takeaway is that some private clinics are falling short of the standard of appropriate care. Nothing about how the NHS is also falling short of the standard simply by not providing any care at all.

Imagine that you had symptoms of a physical illness that impacted your life severely, and the NHS told you that unless you are acutely in danger of dying, they cannot help you, despite there being a valid treatment available. Or if you had received treatment for your illness for years as a child successfully, but now you suddenly are not eligible anymore for that same treatment because you've turned 18. If private clinics are unethical and the NHS won't do anything, where are these people supposed to go?

The BBC is claiming that they take ADHD seriously and that they are not minimising the condition, but the angle of this documentary is to show a bunch of TikTok videos and implying that they spread the idea that everyone has ADHD, which then leads to people who don't really have problems to pay their way to powerful drugs they don't need. Well if that's the case, those people are not vulnerable and so why is Panorama pretending that they are trying to raise the alarm so vulnerable people aren't taken advantage of, when what they are really doing is claiming ADHD is a fad. The BBC already had to change the title of the episode prior to it airing because the original was too sensationalist.

Not sure what the OPs gripe is but both of these statements can be true:

• ADHD can be a daily struggle and have an impact on the sufferers quality of life
• A high proportion of ADHD diagnoses through private clinics are erroneous

"true Autism"? As opposed to "fake Autism"?

I agree with you, it's very poor.

I wonder if it's any coincidence that after years of whingeing and backbiting, the BBCs editorial bias has been slammed massively to the right by the new Chair, Richard Sharp. A political appointee, also implicated in some kind of semi-legitimised corruption involving Boris Johnson.

I've really noticed how far right they have gone, after years of finding them quite anti-government and seeing that as a good thing.