To be angry at the ableism here on MN

[QuitChewingMyPlectrum]

I don't see any threads saying cancer is over diagnosed. Or used as an excuse for something.
More and more ableism is showing up here targeting the ADHD and autistic community and I'm pig sick of it.
Overdiagnosis conversations involving those who have no lived experience (your kids don't count, sorry) suck.
You have ZERO idea what it's like to be us.
And you say WE lack empathy.

Just a reminder for everyone that the BBC was forced to apologise for its inaccurate reporting on this issue by its own Trust, after finding the breaches in editorial standards so severe:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/feb/24/panorama-bbc-trust-ruling

If you think attitudes towards adhd/ autism are bad try discussing personality disorders without being labelled a monster. That’s a free for all.

And I believe self diagnoses should and need to be challenged. It’s fair enough if someone is asking for advice or shared experiences, but this does not make up for a proper diagnosis.

Hey @N3philim it's life isn't it?

That Guardian article is from 2010 and is about a different Panorama program.

You can't get an NHS diagnosis where I live. The single clinic was overwhelmed, so now the only adults being assessed for ADHD and autism are those at immediate risk of physical harm to themselves or others. Everyone else gets an automated online quiz that gives results in the form of a profile listing your strengths, weaknesses and skills to work on.

YANBU!!

There is so much bad science on this thread!

A) People should read the relevant NICE guidelines. Clinicians are prompted to consider alternative explanations and will sometimes use things like QB tests to confirm diagnoses.
B) Being neurodiverse and experiencing trauma are very far from mutually exclusive. There is peer reviewed research showing that autistic people and people with ADHD are more likely to experience trauma and victimisation.
C) People need to be careful with ACEs - the Early Intervention Foundation undertook a major review which exposed several common misconceptions.

@Masterofhappydays Thank you for posting this; It’s not my specialist area but have read a little about this due to my work and was going to post something similar but less articulate.

there are significant overlaps between complex trauma presentation and ADHD. Getting the right diagnosis and treatment should be what we focus on. In practice, in a stretched service, treating with drugs (maybe 3-4 appts total, then discharge to GP) is often going to be easier than therapies to treat trauma (maybe years of specialist follow up). My psychiatry colleagues are under significant pressure to get people through the system and discharged because the waiting lists are insane. Plus they are in a significantly under-resourced area and people need immediate help by the time they see them.

It’s also complicated by the fact that everyone responds to stimulant medication. In the US there is an acknowledged abuse problem.

The UK PTSD charity has a good diagram of overlapping features. Complex trauma and ADHD can, of course, coexist.
https://www.ptsduk.org/can-ptsd-be-mistaken-for-adhd/

@everythingthelighttouches Reread my comment

Just a reminder for everyone that the BBC was forced to apologise for its inaccurate reporting on this issue by its own Trust, after finding the breaches in editorial standards so severe:

That's about a show broadcast 16 years ago, in 2007. It doesn't mean that everything the bbc reports about that issue is now unreliable. They didn't find a systemic issue with all the BBC's reporting on the subject.
If there are issues with the other article & programme (from this year), they should be addressed separately.

Surely any doctor worth their salt wouldn't conform to parental or school pressure!

Are you kidding? Loads do. There are kids in my DC school who had to see 3 or 4 private specialists to get a diagnosis - parents sought more and more opinions because the first drs few said no.... the parents are open about this.

Opinion shopping 100% happens. A gp friend if mine commented among a group of us that if you are willing to pay privately and you want a diagnosis, you will get on eventually if you talk to enough drs.

Yes it's shocking how dismissive people can be of the autistic experience. I think the fact that it's become one of those "everyone has it" conditions is largely the issue. (Like ocd) I personally have no issue with self identification, I recognised myself as autistic several years before I was diagnosed. But I do recognise when a large number of people do this about themselves or their kids it gives the illusion of everyone being autistic. And with that leads to the assumption that diagnoses are chucked out left right and centre. Which those of us who have been diagnosed know is not the case.

Logically if we were the majority we wouldn't have to deal with the ablest bull shit would we.

I think the concern many of us have is the regular expansion of the diagnostic criteria creating an ever more narrow recognition of what "neurotypical" is.

It can feel like our society can only accept differences if they are labelled as a condition, rather than us looking to why so many people are struggling so much with modern life. As a society if such huge numbers of people are struggling so much, we are getting something badly wrong.

Have you been through the diagnosis procedure for adhd?

It is actually quite difficult in schools, or certainly in those I've worked in.

Many pupils self-diagnose after seeing posts on social media. I had one pupil tell me she had ADHD because she rubs her feet together in bed, and she showed me the post. Sometimes they convince their parents on skimpy evidence, sometimes parents seize on it as a reason for their child working below age expectations or being in trouble.

I have also seen parents go to several private practitioners, who do not find their child to be ND, until they eventually get the diagnosis they want. The worst of these reports was on one sheet of A4 and written in very poor English, and was obtained in a city a three hour drive from us after the expense of three failed reports.

I think the journalist who was in the press recently for obtaining a false diagnosis has confirmed what some people already thought.

I hope I am not ablist. I support all of my pupils whether they have a diagnosis or needs suggesting they need one, and comply with the recommendations in every report I receive.

Getting diagnosed with ADHD / autism isn’t like getting a virus diagnosed. You don’t just go into the GP with some symptoms off the internet and come out with your Ritalin prescription. It’s an all-day series of tests with a clinical psychologist. Or it certainly was for DD…

As I said, BBC has poor form for reporting on this issue. Panorama's last attempt resulted in an on-air apology forced by its own Trust. The fact that Carson lied to the private clinics and did not disclose he was doing an 'investigation' for the BBC to support the narrative that ADHD was overdiagnosed, but DID tell the NHS Dr (who conveniently already had a bee in his bonnet about private assessments), is indicative of the quality of the 'research' this article is based on. Carson claims he was honest in all his assessments but gives no more details including how he controlled for his own internal biases - ie he was looking for a specific outcome from the beginning, otherwise he wouldn't have a story. There was no reporting on how long Carson would've had to have waited to have a proper assessment in the NHS (instead of the sham one for the article), and obviously no way of telling what they would've said.

This off the back of numerous reports finding that ADHD 'is under-identified, under-diagnosed, and under-treated. Many seeking help for ADHD face prejudice, long waiting lists, and patchy or unavailable services' (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8017218/) confirmed by the later cross party debate where the poor provision on the NHS and the harm it was causing was discussed and confirmed. It's such dishonest, superficial and agenda-driven journalism but it makes some very unpleasant right-wingers happy I guess.

on the other side of the coin, my aunt traipsed her two kids round seemingly endless doctors and clinics and to specialists to get her two totally NT kids diagnosed with ASD until she found one (private) who would.
I have 3 autistic children and it always seemed so ludicrous to me that a person would do this.

Something interesting I heard in a podcast yesterday (it was the latest episode of the Better Birth podcast about neurodiversity in pregnancy/birth/midwifery if you're interested)

'there are more left handed people than there used to be' well there aren't. Left handed people are accepted now and we don't try to change them or force them to conform to the right handed majority. But we aren't up in arms about how many left handed people there are now!

Same for neurodiversity. There aren't 'more' neurodiverse people. There is more awareness and self awareness. They also said it's likely that 20% of the population experience some form of ND and that it's woefully under diagnosed in women, who don't receive a diagnosis on average until the age of 18. (Due to the stereotype of ND only affecting 'naughty little boys' )

I my experience, a lot of people confuse executive dysfunction with ADHD. One of the main indicators of ADHD is executive dysfunction, but there are many many reasons for this that aren't ADHD.

As mentioned above, it can be hard even for doctors to pick apart. I don't believe doctors are handing out diagnoses just because parents are being tricky, but they are sometimes too quick to reach for the most socially understood and accepted diagnosis. This was seen clearly on the panorama documentary. I don't think it's ableist to recognise this.

This is a distorted perspective.

Our society has great challenges but in schools, workplaces, streets and other places most people are decent.

If you go into my local city centre, most people are fine.

Schools do NOT get additional funding for a diagnosed child. We too are under pressure from parents for a diagnosis ( in my county, we gather the evidence for the paediatricians to diagnose), we have been back to school 2 days and I've had my first request- we usually get a few after the summer holidays. Some may be ADHD/ASD, some may be trauma induced and some are just six weeks of behaviours!

Yes Ive made this point several times, there is a cohort of individuals where the symptoms of trauma are being assessed as traits of ND disorders.

There is a growing awareness of this within various disciplines, some assessors are fairly skilled at recognising attachment difficulties but others are not and so dont understand the differences.

One day its likely there will be a physical/medical test for ND disorders which not only will allow for easier diagnosis but equally separate out the different cohorts.

A trauma informed model can be quite helpful, but people - including professionals - also need to remember that like with neurodiversity (especially undiagnosed neurodiversity) in a NT world is a pretty traumatising experience in itself. It doesn't mean that a child is being misdiagnosed as autistic or with ADHD. The two are not entirely exclusive. And this is a massive misconception that parents, families and those who are autistic/ADHD have to fight. It is so easy to slip back into parent blaming rather than just supporting the child and family.

Oh gosh doctors just give in for ASD diagnosis? Gosh I wish they had with my eldest, we wouldnt have lost 2 years fighting for his needs to be recognised. I probably would have given up if his school hadn’t been absolutely adamant and over those years his ASD and adhd traits did become very evident. I even had one doctor draw a straight line and say ‘if we look at autism, your son is here at the closer end of normal so not much point looking for a diagnosis’. Any parent of a ASD child will read that and know how awful that train of thought is.

Children like him who are (seemingly) fully verbal and academically able are at huge risk of being let down or misdiagnosed - and it would have been worse if he’d been born female.

As for myself, yes I am very convinced I have ADHD and very likely ASD. It’s not just the little ‘I’ve seen it on TikTok’ silly symptoms people come out with. I first said ‘I think I have adhd’ at 15 years old over 20 years ago and nobody listened then. My mother even said she thought I was autistic and did nothing about it. Now have to wait an infinite amount of time for an NHS diagnosis of adhd but in the meantime I can start healing from the colossal amount of shit and abuse I went through due to not having the condition/s recognised my whole life.