Channel 4 ADHD documentary

[crackerjackbaby]

Totally totally one sided. And very dangerous as a result of that. AIBU to think this?

Do you have a child or any family members with traits?

Right to Choose providers operate under an NHS Standard Contract, they are contractually required to provide services to NHS standards, which includes adhering to relevant NICE guidelines

ADHD is under diagnosed in both groups.The scientific and clinical evidence explicitly separates children from adults. Both groups show gaps between expected prevalence and actual recorded diagnoses. Research separates the two demographics based on distinct evidence.

The BBC Panorama documentary received heavy criticism because despite highlighting some poor private sector practices, the program stoked unfair stigma and undermined legitimate medical diagnoses. Surveys of hundreds of patients showed the program worsened public misunderstanding and increased daily stigma for people living with the condition. Critics argued the show painted all private providers with the same brush, ignoring high-standard clinics and the extreme pressures of multi-year NHS waiting lists that force patients to go private. Groups warned that the sensational tone discouraged vulnerable individuals from seeking necessary medical help or doubting their own valid diagnoses. The program failed to adequately explore the valid reasons why adult ADHD diagnoses have risen or the systemic underfunding of the National Health Service.

What a truly appalling and offensive post . None of us want our children to have “membership” to the autism or ADHD “category “.It has a huge impact on life , is horrific to live with and destroys lives. There is a reason why suicide rates are significantly higher for both and particularly for those with both adhd and autism which is common.

And immunity from what actions please?

To get a diagnosis of autism or adhd it has to significantly impact life. People are born with both as they are gay. None are “ identities”. That is so offensive.

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I am not an expert but I do have experience of teaching primary aged children who are medicated for adhd. It can make them lose their appetite, not good for growing children, and for all of the children I have taught, made them lethargic and zombie like. Their unmedicated circumstances were difficult to manage but I would prefer that to lethargy.

many of these children have other things going on as well which exacerbates symptoms, absent parents, poverty, poor boundaries etc. so it’s difficult to tell what is the ADHD and what is other stuff that we can address differently.

i don’t necessarily subscribe to the ‘it doesn’t exist’ camp but I do believe that schools and society are becoming more difficult to navigate with excessive tech and the associated breakdown of social norms. As a teacher, I advocate for individualised care for kids with any neurodiversity - often they can benefit from extra breaks, standing desks, extra activity and personalised behaviour policies so they aren’t in breach before you’re a minute into the lesson. Empathy and kindness can go a long way.

there is also an irony that in any given class you will have diagnosed children - often privately diagnosed - who have much milder symptoms than children who have no diagnosis and often come from poorer families. So diagnoses often divide down class and advantage lines too which is bizarre. You end up having children with significantly less need having more formalised care packages than those with much more severe symptoms.

so as educators, diagnosis is only part of any picture and we take the children at face value regardless and try to provide what they need, diagnosis or not.

The documentary, and my own knowledge of those who have undergone such an assessment, raises concerns about how robust they are.

Yes. Plus there is known heredity with ADHD and autism. If you have siblings/ cousins all in the same area, then that may skew the stats slightly in a smaller group. Where I live, parents also discuss which schools are good for supporting children with SEN, especially where those children can be in mainstream education. If you have three schools your children could go to, and one has an excellent reputation for supporting children with SEN you are going to make the choice to send your children to the school with the good SEN reputation.

No the documentary focused on private providers, not all are under NHS Right to Chose which have to follow NICE guidelines.

Since the programme was made local NHS bodies (Integrated Care Boards) and GP surgeries have clamped down on how assessments are accepted and managed.Because of a surge in patients using private clinics or "Right to Choose" pathways due to horrendously long NHS wait lists , the NHS has tightened its scrutiny. GPs are increasingly rejecting private diagnostic reports if they do not strictly and robustly document every single component of the NICE NG87 standards (e.g., lacking deep developmental history or informant reports). Since 2023, many local GP practices have completely stopped or heavily restricted signing Shared Care Agreements for ADHD.This means even if you get a valid diagnosis privately, your GP may refuse to take over the ongoing NHS prescribing of your medication, forcing you to pay private prescription costs long-term if you were forced to go private.Many primary care clinics have introduced stringent triaging before they will even add a patient to an NHS waitlist. GPs are heavily vetting patients to ensure they demonstrate severe, documented functional impairment in at least two areas of life before a referral is granted.

Basically it’s crucial that there is easier access to NHS diagnosis which the NHS taskforce has recognised. Many can’t afford private as it’s expensive.NHS diagnosis is fantastic in our area and like other areas it’s robust and after diagnosis you are offered a course of group therapy which helps with strategies and face to face if you need it. They are thorough when prescribing medication.

That’s really good to know, thank you. I was really concerned about a 7 year old potentially being prescribed amphetamines after a 10 minute conversation on a screen ( GP refused even though it was via right to choose). Also any lack of any social assessment with the issues focusing on the child and not their environment including parent inability to provide boundaries.

It isn’t true that private providers don’t screen for trauma. My son’s pre-assessment questionnaires asked about this and I had to give details. Both the psychiatrist and psychologist who assessed him, separately, asked about it during his assessments. School had to fill out extensive paperwork about him prior to his assessments as did I. Ds had to do his own questionnaires too. This was followed by two 2-hour assessment sessions with the psychiatrist and psychologist. Both clinicians then had a meeting to discuss all the information they had from school, me, DS, and the assessments themselves to see what their professional opinion was as to whether or not he met the diagnostic criteria or whether his difficulties were better explained by something else. This was then followed by a in depth written report with recommendations for what would help him including recommendations for school. They followed NICE guidance.
Those who think private ADHD assessments are not worth the paper they are written on need to actually look at what they involve before highlighting their own ignorance with prejudiced judgements.

So you admit you made a success of your lives and thrived, good for you, so pull the ladder up Jack.

As soon as they found a jab for weight loss all the skinny people went mad, now there’s medication for the ones that were no competition and all the nt’s and people who managed to make it in life are disgusted.

I am not medically trained, so excuse me if this is a stupid question. But if ADHD is hereditary, how can it not be biologically tested? There’s no brain scans or any sort of test which can pick it up? Schizophrenia can be evidenced using brain scans, autism can be looking at eye sight scans. But ADHD can’t. So how can something not seen biologically be passed down? If it’s not environmental?

ADHD can be identified with a brain scan but it’s expensive to carry out.

https://creyos.com/blog/adhd-brain-scan

There’s plenty of information online on how ADHD brains are wired differently to neurotypical brains if you want to educate yourself.

Also if ADHD is so profoundly debilitating and life limiting, and has always existed presumably in the numbers it does now, how did people used to cope?
School was certainly much more boring than it is now, lots of rote learning and much less individualised. Plus strict punishments. So why was it always poor children who used to get the caine (according to my grandparents)?
How come when you look at prison records, it is generally poor people who are in prison? And not all the middle classes who have ADHD now? ADHD, even in the eighties when I grew up, was something poor, naughty white boys had. And so some of my school friends who didn’t meet that criteria were presumably missed. But they weren’t jumping out of their seats and being disruptive, they weren’t acting like my daughter by eating pebbles, sitting in bins, needing a 1:1.

The kids from my primary school ended up going down many different paths, prison, mental illness, suicide, one went to school Oxford, one ended up very wealthy. But I see no correlation with how they were in the classroom and their fate.
My daughter’s class are half feral. They have so many advantages to the kids I grew up with. Most of the parents own their own homes. Lots of day trips and extra curricular stuff. The only change I see is in attitudes to parenting.
I am not strict. Most parents are ‘gentle parents’. Plus screens, plus cost of living. Plus advanced maternal age.
This is a crisis of late stage capitalism.
I don’t think ADHD has always existed in the numbers it does today, I just don’t.

The issue here is that private firms are profiteering from this and as always when these kinds of things fall into private hands profit is the driver, not ethics. And the medical community has known for years that these diagnosis are at best flimsy and at worst playing on the anxieties of parents around this narrative which I would suggest is an echo chamber heightened by access to social media. It's a true scandal and I for one am pleased it's being exposed, many children in future will want to understand why they've been given drugs on such a tenuous and unscientific basis.

@MumofCandRagree. I don’t think people realise how open to interpretation psychiatry is. Especially in the private sector. Gun for hire psychiatrists will have fragments of background, one 45 minute teams call and say someone has ADHD. They won’t see the trauma, the day to day reality which points to a personality disorder, for example . It’s really damaging, most of all for the client.

Have you not even bothered to read the posts below in your haste to form your own narrative.

@moonraker0 more expensive than years of medication and regular meds reviews? It’s one of the more expensive treatments. It costs the NHS a lot, hence the resistance to shared care.

“I don’t think ADHD has always existed in the numbers it does today, I just don’t.”

That would be because women, girls, people of colour and those with autism too were shut out of the diagnosis process.

You do realise only approximately 1.19 to 1.6 % of people in the UK have a formal, recorded ADHD diagnosis in their primary care or GP records, and even though health estimates suggest that actual prevalence is much higher it’s still only around 3 to 5% of the general population.

Brain scans show a lot of promise, but at the moment mainly at a group level they can see a difference. They cant quite diagnose through scans yet.

There is a lot about how cells metabolise dopamine and dopamine receptors which again are good at a group level but not quite at the diagnosis standard.

So we have biological markers they can use to see this group is different to that group but not accurate enough to diagnose yet.

Not as much as undiagnosed and unsupported ADHD costs.

“ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), when unsupported, is a potent route into educational failure, long-term unemployment, crime, substance misuse, suicide, mental and physical illness. Economic costs to individuals and the government of at least £17 billion are avoidable as, when appropriately supported, people with ADHD can thrive and fully engage in a working life.”

@Cantloseyou, it may be that the unruly poor kids had ND parents who had not managed to find their stride, leading to poor educational outcomes, erratic employment and disorganised lives. Plus, of course, the adult generations of my childhood and, I'm guessing, your Gran's were damaged by war.

I've no idea what's led to the changes you observe. Unlikely to be a single cause, as you say.

That would mean that no inherited condition existed before there were tests to identify it.

Many women have suffered because of that approach.