Rush to diagnose ADHD and autism can damage children: As rates soar up to 40-fold, a major review warns of the toll on those wrongly given a label

[Rubydobydo]

Britain risks harming a generation of children by over-diagnosing ADHD and autism, a major review warns today.
Parents are incentivised to have their children diagnosed by misguided schools and welfare systems that reward such 'labels', the report found.
Youngsters have also been influenced by social media posts that wrongly present common traits as evidence of the conditions.
https://www.dailymail.com/health/article-16194777/Rush-diagnose-ADHD-autism-damage-children.html

Discuss?

@4DCheckmatenailed it in one post. I'm so angry seeing the news today that I have had to now avoid all the news bulletins.

I do know someone who was diagnosed with adhd at the age of two, and I wonder he was misdiagnosed. He was a perfect baby until his mum had a second baby, and then he started playing up. I was warned that it was normal for the eldest to play up, so expected it. This mum went and got him diagnosed.

I may be wrong, maybe he has got adhd, but maybe he was also a kid reacting to his world changing.

I’m don’t think this is just anecdotal. I’m sure I read a report that said exactly this about premature babies. Obviously this is a positive because far far more babies are now surviving a premature birth.

I’m not sure how accurate this is but I’ve also been told that there is a high link between being born prematurely and the chances of having autism. I’m sure someone has recently looked into the correlation between trauma in-utero and autism too.

The percentage of children estimated to have Sen has run at about 20% since the 1970s which is when the first real estimates were made.

at that point children with severe Sen were considered “uneducable” and were not permitted to attend school.

there has been validated scientific research into the increase in autism diagnoses and there is an increase at all ages including 0-2, research is now focusing on why more autistic children are born (suggestions include older fathers etc).

Yes but in the 1970s there were:
No scans - no medical abortions - every disabled baby would be born - every single baby with Down Syndrome, spina bifida, heart issues etc
No screening
Children damaged by the following illnesses which had no vaccine - hepatitis, measles, shingles, meningitis etc
Plus kids with no treatment for existing conditions - spinal muscular atrophy, cystic fibrosis etc

We should have far FEWER disabled children than the 1970s did.

ND who would have been mostly fine, if a little quirky/ eccentric, thirty/ fifty/ two hundred years ago, struggles more now. Everything is louder, busier, more distracting, school is more pressured, and it creates more issues than in the past, leading to more requests for diagnosis and support.

I though DD1 was exactly like me but she did struggle more - the nosie level in classrooms were a real issue. All of them struggled in canteen with big echy locations and larger cohorts.

But you can mitigate this at home surely?
I'd say we did mitiage a lot at home - quite areas, walking lots of outside time - parent round after school - good food - but school envronment got worse and worse and my least affected child started struggling to stay in classes - toilet and food access was no existant at one point for her- school reponse with no consultation was to let her have a pass to leave - we had to try and get her to stay and catch up lost teaching at home.

There comes a point when you do question are they better off at home - I was doing that in primary when I seemed to be doing the basic teaching as they struggled so much but school had no support and squeezed round school day. We did keep them in - but it's really not been easy.

I have a single parent family member with likely ADHD child - they've been made reduant serval times - it's apprently coincidentally to having to pick up their child from school all the time beacuse they can not cope.

I was talking to someone yesterday (a psychologist) who said there was a study done where kids who exhibited enough signs/symptoms to get an adhd diagnosis had all screen time removed and symptoms subsided and they no longer met the threshold. Now I’m not saying that would work for all, but potentially some??

Perhaps schools need to stop pushing children in a way that many are finding intolerable, and then not meeting the needs of those struggling, Then those pesky parents wouldn’t be forced down the route of diagnosis because they feel like there’s literally no other option to get some help for their child.

My now adult son would definitely say he was harmed by an unnecessary diagnosis, but when you look at the facts - daily meltdowns and violent assaults for 6 years until he was finally taken out of school - his dad and I felt we had no option but to seek answers and a written report that should have led to some help.

As for neurodivergence being more of a problem now - it’s really not rocket science. Life is shit, many of us are under so much more pressure now than ever before, with little money, particularly when we have children with SN. Then we (the SN parents) are roundly blamed for the shitshow that education is. So many children now leave school as young adults barely able to function - the NEETS I personally know are all ND and fucked up by school. People don’t thrive when they are pushed to their limits time and time again.

Can you link to the study please?
If it’s the one I’m thinking of it’s clear that there is no cure for adhd, but that unstructured and unsupervised screen time can worsen symptoms.

This gives a very one sided very point. The other side includes some DC who would have died from prematurity/medical conditions/accidents previously now survive but are disabled.

DC with conditions such as CF are still disabled. Medical advances haven’t changed that. Treatments and life expectancy have improved, yes, but DC still meet the definition of having a disability.

But you can mitigate this at home surely?

No, there’s no ‘surely’ about it. For some DC with SEN, that isn’t possible and mitigation at home alone isn’t sufficient.

Yes but even factoring that in, we should still on paper have far fewer disabled kids today than in the 1970s. Yet that’s far from the case. I think we need to acknowledge this rather than desperately trying to skirt around it.

There’s also the impact of increased numbers of children being driven to school. I’m not suggesting that a morning drive causes adhd but a danish study of approx 20,000 kids did suggest that a 12 minute walk in a morning has a significant positive impact on attention levels enough to equate to approximately six extra months of academic progress.

Last time I went to the pub with my choir I sat next to a lovely lady who told me she had been one of the first “miracle” babies born at 24 weeks and neonatal care had advanced to the point she could be kept alive.

she’d had multiple operations as a child and was both physically and mentally disabled. She lived in a house with her dad and he’d adapted it to have a “granny flat” for her as she wasn’t able to live independently.

Plenty of us have seen drastic changes in the schooling system in the last 20+ years.

Far more children are now struggling. It would be interesting to roll back targets to a point where children weren’t under quite so much pressure, or at least to have a variety of schools offering more flexibility rather than the current march of academisation that rather narrows what’s on offer.

@Rubydobydo what is your view of the topic?
DF link and DISCUSS is considered rude.
Me. Lots of hyper ADHD in the family the psychiatric assessment was very welcomed. Showed a bright young fellow who absolutely needs exercise. Can’t sit still to take any tests yet. we expect with time that will improve.
Obtaining meds and med reviews have been a nightmare, downright disgraceful.

I can’t link the study (it wasn’t me that posted it) but there’s a Romanian clinician who did a longitudinal study of children with four hours plus screen time a day and he hypothesised a link between excessive screen time and similar behaviours to autism. I don’t think he ever suggested screens cause autism. Because of this it’s fairly routine in Romania to impose a screen time ban as a first step in the diagnostic process before an asd diagnosis is given. It’s fairly controversial outside of Romania because of the worry that it can cause a diagnostic delay with some children although I suppose a decision would have to be made over which is preferable a diagnostic delay for some or a misdiagnosis for others.

So it is very hard to measure the number of children born disabled.
not least because many disabilities are not diagnosed until significantly after birth - diagnosing pre birth is unusual.

the nhs does track this data but only for recent times (ie the last ten years or so).

That data is here:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/ncardrs-congenital-anomaly-statistics-annual-data/ncardrs-congenital-condition-statistics-report-2022

it’s not terribly useful because many disabilities are spotted at or post birth.

There wasn’t data collected in the 1970s on how many children were disabled.

We need to stop putting children into neat little boxes of immaculate behaviour and pefect academic attainment.

Agree & agree.

Interesting.

The Mass Experiment 2012 - the researchers initially set out to prove that eating breakfast and lunch were the primary drivers of classroom focus. While a healthy diet did matter, they discovered that the active commute walking or cycling had a much larger immediate impact on concentration.

Schools we've had have tended to focus more on the getting enough sleep - which I understand is vital but older two with ADHD have always been nightmares with sleep - though we did find some things that helped a bit. Later got told it was likely a sign of their ADHD

I agree that school environment and academic pressure is not helpful.

Anecdotally, a relative who works in a primary school noted that dysregulated behaviour improved across a whole class, including children with quite significant additional needs, when one child with very challenging behaviour was absent for several weeks. In previous generations that particular child would almost certainly have been in specialist provision - and their presence in the mainstream classroom was materially impacting the ability of other children to cope at school too.

Academic pressure and rote learning plus a loud, chaotic environment with violent behaviour from children who really shouldn't be required to try and manage in a regular classroom, is not a winning formula for anyone.

Way too much time spent online, gaming, social media resulting in inattentiveness, mood swings, anxiety and lack of in-person social skills

Parents clambering for a diagnosis because their perfectly normal 3 year old can’t sit still and concentrate

An overall lack of resilience in parents and children. People just cannot ‘cope’ these days. Everyone seems to be overstimulated, overwhelmed or triggered in some way.

permissive/gentle parenting. A lack of consequences and boundaries lead parents to think that there is always a medical reason for their child’s behaviour

the explosion of adults also seeking for a diagnosis. I have a few adult friends who have been privately diagnosed and frankly, it’s ridiculous. But they all seem very proud of their lanyards.

the criteria for diagnosis is now so broad that almost anybody can get it (if you pay privately which most people do)

in amongst all of that there will be a number of genuine cases but I don’t believe for one second that we’re ‘just better at diagnosing it than we were 30 years ago’

Going back to the issue of NEETs and ADHD/anxiety and screen time, I’m in a FB group for women over 50 in UK, and somebody asked if people still had their adult children living at home and why. There was a small cohort of those saving up for their own place while working, but there was an overwhelming majority of men, aged from late 20s to 40s, who had never had a job, or had had one and couldn’t cope due to “anxiety”, who were still living with their parents, spending all day gaming, never going out, only online friends, who were being enabled by their mothers, who liked having them at home, who did all of their cleaning, laundry and provided them with meals. This, surely, must be a big part of the problem - I’m sure a lot of these men would previously have been thought of as quirky, or a bit odd, but they would have had a job of some kind, and belonged to clubs where they met others with niche interests.

She didn’t tell me the title of it I’m afraid. If I see her again I’ll ask. She definitely said they’d no longer met the threshold for diagnosis rather than just improve

She said it was Romanian so sounds like this one.