The Focus Fix
There’s been a fourfold increase in the number of adults seeking an ADHD diagnosis since 2020, with #adhd content now big business on platforms such as TikTok and YouTube. Yet the condition remains widely misunderstood. Is rising visibility a good thing? Or do attempts to raise awareness risk pathologising – or even monetising – our everyday struggles?
BRAIN TRUST - ARE RECENT TRENDS UNDERMINING A SERIOUS NEUROLOGICAL CONDITION?
Sometimes it feels like everyone I know has ADHD.
‘I think I’m a bit ADHD,’ a friend declared back in 2020 when I told her about my diagnosis. I’ve had the same conversation on multiple occasions since then. My friend wasn’t wrong in one sense: most of us do possess mild iterations of the sum of parts that make up the neurological condition known as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – especially in the age of digital distraction. Struggle to concentrate at work? Check. Can’t go five minutes without checking your phone? Check. Prone to impulsivity? Check. Congratulations, you’re officially an inhabitant of the modern world. But do you have ADHD?
More of us think we might do. There’s been a 400% increase in the number of adults seeking a diagnosis since 2020. Meanwhile, around 170,000 identified patients were prescribed at least one drug for ADHD between July and September 2022 – a 20.4% increase on the 141,000 patients during the same period in 2021.
Of course, being ‘a bit ADHD’ isn’t the same as actually having ADHD. I was diagnosed during the second lockdown of the Covid pandemic. I was 37 at the time. I’d always known that something wasn’t quite right with my brain, though I didn’t have a label for it. There were too many things in my life that didn’t add up. I flunked school because I couldn’t focus. I was incapable of holding my concentration. Every thought would flutter away like a stack of Post-Its caught in a gust of wind. When it came to schoolwork, I felt defeated, and so I would bunk off and smoke cannabis with my friends. It offered release from the constant churn of my overactive mind.
Undiagnosed ADHD can have a profound impact on a person’s self-esteem. As we pass through childhood and adolescence, our core identity begins to take shape. This is strongly influenced by how other people respond to us and how we measure up in terms of societal definitions of success. My struggles in the classroom saw me written off as ‘unacademic’. And so, while my friends were being readied for university, I was being told in condescending tones that I should pursue something ‘practical’ instead. Labels from my school reports buried themselves in my psyche. According to my teachers, I was ‘lazy’, ‘disruptive’, a ‘troublemaker
