Panorama Private ADHD clinics exposed

[Youdoyoubabe]

Nothing surprising there really but good to highlight it on national television. Everyone has some characteristics of ADHD.

She was mislead over what the journalist was making the programme about and duped into giving information as a result.

She expected better from the BBC and thought this was more inline with a red top by all accounts.

Full disclosure... I also spoke to the journalist. I provided him with the partially upheld complaint I made against the NHS. I can't remember exactly what he told me the programme was about. He mentioned variation between private clinics (and that he heard the one I went to was good) and I contrasted my positive experience with the private clinic where I was diagnosed with the huge difficulties I was having in the NHS. The NHS shortcomings were obviously not covered in the programme. I do feel pretty sad about it all.

This is incorrect. Stimulant meds do not have these benefits in people without ADHD. They are however good at helping students/professionals pull an all nighter or lose weight.

I’m sorry he completely disregarded your experience of the NHS to suit his clearly very biased agenda.

@MerlinBirds Its not that there isn’t any problem at all with his some HCPs and some private clinics might be operating.

The problem is that only focusing on telling that part of the story and contrasting this with an NHS example (set up as good NHS v bad private sector) distorts what’s going on in deeply problematic ways.

There would be little to no demand for private sector provision if the NHS were adequately resourced and not set up to try to put off people seeking ADHD diagnosis, many of whom have ADHD.

Or if the NHS actually helped the people who are seeking diagnosis but don’t meet the criteria. There are people don’t get proper help for the actual problems in their life, or even a diagnosis that helps them to understand their problems. So they can only grasp on to ADHD as an explanation and pursue a private diagnosis.

Similarly, if the education system
actually met the needs of children, and was willing to do so without a diagnosis and EHCP, then parents wouldn’t be so
desperate to seek a diagnosis just to try to ensure their child gets a decent education.

It’s not that it’s all just lies. It’s that the way the story is being partially told is unhelpful.

https://twitter.com/Emily_Mckenzie/status/1658634695318421511

Let's expose the unethical journalistic practices that went into making #Panorama - ADHD Clinics Exposed. It appears that@RCars0n1
went undercover in a private group for ADHD women and then messaged people pretending he was doing a piece on #ADHD diagnoses "within the NHS".

That group is a safe space for thousands of women with ADHD. We share deeply personal thoughts and experiences with each other - it's one of the few places online where we can be truly vulnerable and not have to worry about being mocked or even manipulated by bad actors.

Maybe the real exposé here is the BBC enabling a male reporter to pose as a woman and tell multiple lies in order to gain access to a space intended for women, many of whom are legally classed as vulnerable. #Panorama #ADHDPanorama #ADHD

Its an attempt to fuck over women with ADHD specifically by the look of it.

One of the replies:

So this was after he had done his assessments. He needed a gotcha but hadn’t got one.

And another:
I get how this looks and feels intrusive. Maybe I'm missing something. How is he going undercover if he has declared he's a journalist and working for the BBC? And if ADHD group is on Facebook then it's public domain info, not private (bc FB does not enforce ID controls).

Reply:
Because to gain access to the group (which is set to private - so people can't see any of the group's content or userbase unless they're a member) you have to be a woman with ADHD, and the mods of the group vet everyone beforehand to make sure.

You have to answer Qs about yourself & agree to follow the rules etc beforehand too. So to get into the group he will have had to make a fake profile, pretend to be a woman and lie about having ADHD and why they're there.

And while it's possible that he does indeed "have a friend with ADHD" in there who randomly "updates him on issues" and notifies him when someone makes a post saying they got a diagnosis, but why would she? He doesn't have ADHD and he's not a woman soI find it highly unlikely

Its dubious and unethical at best.

And someone else:
https://twitter.com/adhdtechrec/status/1659064522613587970

Aisling Gallagher who is named as the additional reporter at the bottom conducted research under false pretences that it’s for women with ADHD. I only realised last night and I feel sick knowing I shared everything

It’s unethical to lie to your participants like that. There’s no reasonable justification for tricking women in an online ADHD support group into giving you information about their lives and health.

Health information is especially sensitive, and protected in law as a result. Journalists should not be lying to people
to get them to disclose anything about their health or treatment.

This is completely different to ‘being undercover’ to expose something. Those women have done nothing wrong (to justify any weird tactics as ‘in the public interest’) and should have been asked for properly informed consent - which means he needed to be honest about what his documentary was about.

Spot on.

People (women) who were targeted in this way, should be complaining to the BBC with evidence of how he approached them.

This is not ok. They did not give informed consent. The target of the 'sting' was the private practices not innocent parties who may or may not have fallen foul of them.

If I hadn’t already cancelled my TV licence I would’ve cancelled it over this. inexcusable behaviour from the BBC. It gets worse and worse.

Oh and complaining to Ofcom.

What I have a problem with is not a subject but how it's handled.

This needed to be sensitive because of the stigma and simultaneous known issues of under diagnosis within the NHS especially with regards to women and the extra problems women have getting a diagnosis because of gender bias is diagnosis criteria.

None of this was considered. Indeed it looks very much like the complete opposite was done.

And having a legitimate concern over overdiagnosis is not an excuse for unethical and poor journalistic standards that we expect from the BBC.

Remember this is a programme where the words Bashir and Diana still hang over with regards to unethical journalism.

There have been other controversies with the programme before.

The ends do not justify the means. Not if you claim to have world leading standards in journalism and you profess to be a good employer for anyone who is neurodiverse and not sexist.

Given there is a whole separate debate about safe spaces for women and how they need protection, it doubly adds to the poor optics

Journalistic practice matters. Not just content. And the content here ends up being highly questionable because of methods used - so it doesn't further the claim of over diagnosis in private clinics either because of that.

It just adds to stigma. That's all.

So in your 30 yrs you managed to study neurophysiology brain neurochemistry. You do understand the neurochemical imbalance prssent in the adhd brain and also the fact that the pre frontal cortex is slower to develope in the adhd brain there is developmental delay. If we look at the average adhd pt they have a shorter life expectancy more health inequalities. More broken relationships, substance abuse issues and risk taking behaviours. And if the option for children is medicating or having them either alcholics or using hard drugs or adhd meds give me the meds. Also in the adhd brain the meds dont normally get you high. It maybe time for a career change.

Why are you and other people lying about that? What's your motivation?

Stimulants including stimulant medications effect everybody.

How do you think stimulant meds work? They're central nervous system stimulants. And they increase levels of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain.

The theory behind ADHD being that individuals with ADHD have decreased levels in the brain. The meds increase levels of dopamine and norepinephrine in any brain.

And what does that do? Increased levels of dopamine and norepinephrine increases attention, alertness, energy, and concentration. For everybody.

Why do you think stimulant meds are controlled drugs if they don't have positive effects for everybody? Why do you think they're abused? Why do you think non-prescribed stimulants like amphetamines and cocaine are illegal?

You do know some of the prescribed meds for ADHD are amphetamine based right?

Why do you think ADHD meds are banned substances in sports?

https://sportsmedicine-open.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40798-021-00374-y

Oh dear, I think you need to do some research and I can’t be bothered to go and find those research papers for you.
What a gross misunderstanding.
ADHD meds never ever get kids “high” in any way. How much exactly do you think they are taking??

How concerning that some people think this way. Considering medical stimulants for adhd to have the same effect as street drugs or bored housewives popping pills. What an incredibly gross misunderstanding of adhd you must have.

Caffeine is a stimulant. Some people with ADHD react to it by feeling sleepy.

They prescribe stimulants to some people with ADHD because they don’t have the effects in those patients that recreational drug users are seeking. No one is trying to get 8 year olds high.

Asthma drugs are regulated in sport because they can be performance enhancing. It doesn’t mean that asthmatics are doping when they use them.

Things are more complicated than ‘stimulant drugs affect everyone in X way’.

That doesn’t mean that everyone with ADHD responds to stimulant drugs in the same way. Or that stimulants are the only way to treat ADHD. Or that the side effects are not significant. Often with medication it’s a set of trade offs. Is the medication having positive effects that are enough to make living with the negative effects worthwhile? The answer will be different for everyone.

And that’s why people are medically supervised and monitored on medication. It’s regularly reviewed and medication type, dosage and how it aligns with other treatments are iterated to try to get the best outcome for the patient.

And it’s really important to remember that not everyone with an ADHD diagnosis is medicated at all. When I was diagnosed (by a consultant psychiatrist who works in
the NHS and the private sector), her first treatment recommendation was for ADHD coaching and she directed me to DWP’s Access to work to help with this. She also
said that I could be investigated for medication - which is very effective for psychiatry - if I chose to.

I haven’t done so for various reasons, one of which is that I need to ask my obstructive GP practice to refer me for some tests. And the other is that I can’t imagine them agreeing to shared care at any point and I simply cannot afford to be treated privately. Even shared care is a significant financial burden because the monitoring and review is done privately.

That doesn’t mean medication would be the right thing for me. But I can’t even try to find out because the NHS isn’t interested in treating adults like me. That’s shit.

Even so having a diagnosis has value in that it helps me to frame issues and identify avenues for exploration and improvement in different ways. And to (try to) be less annoyed at myself as I try to get through life.

Speed which is the stimulant usually prescribed, helps everyone focus on tasks, get more energy and be happier. If you don't have ADHD speed can help you focus on studying longer than you would be able to normally. It is why it is abused by students. Recreational drug users use it to stay awake and make them feel happy, although they tend to take it at higher doses than prescribed doses, so the impact is magnified.
But that is why it helps people with ADHD.

Are there any NTs who are really going to the effort of pretending to have ADHD, paying £1k+ for a private assessment, pretending to have ADHD in the 1hr+ long assessment, paying out £50-100 a month in drugs for a long and frustrating titration process, just to get their hands on some speed so they can do their coursework a bit faster?

You can get some speed from Dodgy Dave the local dealer for far less time, effort and money.

- no one pays the money to go themselves or take their dc for a diagnosis without having a lot of concerns already.

That is true but if the private clinics shown on the programme are indicative of what happens there is a real problem. The presenter was assessed by two private clinics during very quick assessments as having AdHD and prescribed very expensive drugs for life. Then he had a much more extensive NHs assesment and was told he did not have ADHD.
I got the impression that the private clinics tell people what they want to hear as for some of them believe a diagnosis of ADHD and a prescription is the answer to their problem

Adhd meds do not make adhd patients feel “happy” 🙄
Speed doesn’t make non adhd people “cleverer”, nor more organised, less forgetful, less “inappropriate”…etc the list could go on

No, in real life (without lying in order to make a so called documentary) that individual would never have been diagnosed as he would have been screened out.
Also in real life, I really doubt he would have received a 3 hour appointment on the NHS, because he was given this due to disclosing his journalistic bias.

I once assessed a young lady in her early 20s. She came from the Phillipines and was a post graduate student. Her parents had paid £££ for her to get her degree and post grad in the UK, believing it to be a superior education to what she would get in the Philippines. So that she wouldn't let them down, she would spend every hour studying and bought Ritalin online in order to stay awake and help her concentrate. She ended up having to leave college as she ended up in an acute psychotic episode and honestly it was so, so sad to see as again, she was really suffering.
My point in this is certainly the young student did not have ADHD and as a result the Ritalin did not have the effect its supposed to and ended up causing a mental health crisis which previously did not exist. And that's why a clear diagnosis needs to happen before these drugs are prescribed,. They're very powerful

Again, a scaremongering , antidotal and broad brush approach with a very simplistic thought process. Someone brought medicines online, took whatever dose they wanted and got sick, which may or may not have been coincidental.

Maybe there were confounders, maybe with or without this would have occurred anyway due to the great mental strain she was obviously under to do this in the first place? Maybe the person who gave it to her was a first class idiot and the dose was completely wrong and she Ben without ADHD with the ‘correct’ dose this would not have occurred. There are a thousand maybe’s, what if’s and everything else in that. I could give lots of medicines that could cause AE’s if not prescribed well to an individual. Heck, I could kill certain people by prescribing anti hypertensives without due consideration for individual circumstance not taking lots of factors into account. Does that mean no one should take an anti hypertensive? No one should take a medicine because one person ended up in critical care because a Dr didn’t take reduced renal function or similar into account when prescribing. Most medicines have the potential to be ‘powerful’ and that may be a problem in some people, and is always a consideration in the risk/benefit approach.

In general, with prescribers who know these drugs well and with routine monitoring and changes as necessary (which may even be discontinuation in some circumstances) the use of these medicines is not an issue. Someone buying medicine illegally online and likely using massive incorrect doses is in no way relatable to what everyone else is talking about.

The problem with a programme like that Panorama is that this is the sort of perspective that people with limited knowledge of the area come away with. It was intended to this mislead you like this to stoke outrage.

He was assessed by 3 private clinics, not two.

2 of the assessments were not particularly quick and he downplayed the pre screening information he would have needed to provide.

A prescription is a first line treatment for ADHD based on the NICE guidance.

Despite the presenter saying that he was put on a prescription “for life”, that isn’t how it would have worked. He would have gone through a titration process and regular medication reviews - he just avoided mentioning this.

NHS assessments are not all like the one he was explicitly given for TV - not even close.