ADHD is not over diagnosed - too often it goes under the radar
17 March 2025, 18:21 | Updated: 17 March 2025, 19:45
Right now, it feels like the government is at war with mental health, with ADHD the preferred punching bag.
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People with ADHD have been silenced and ostracised for too long, and it is wonderful that we’re finally being allowed our voice.
But there are many who would prefer to stigmatise us back into silence. The latest round of re-stigmatisation is happening right now.We’re being delegitimatized with claims of ADHD overdiagnosis, and told the over-claims are being used to acquire a life on benefits.
It’s provable nonsense. Recent analysis of over 9 million patient GP records showed just 1 in 9 of those with ADHD have a diagnosis for it. Just 0.32% of the entire population.
We have underdiagnosis not overdiagnosis. Some push the idea that everyone has a private diagnosis – just 12% of ADHD medication is privately prescribed.
Frankly, the idea that we can have ADHD overdiagnosis, or an easy way to benefits, when wait times are usually years or over a decade, or in one NHS area a wait of over 2,000 years, is preposterous.
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There are 2.6million people with ADHD and estimates suggest over 2 million people don’t have a diagnosis.I’d call the accusations laughably wrong. Except it is no laughing matter. Having ADHD is extraordinarily tough for many.
1 in 4 women with ADHD, and 1 in 10 men with ADHD, will at some point try to take their own life. We have shorter lives on average – 9 years less for a woman and 7 years less for a man.
For the first two years of ADHD UK, the charity I founded, we were almost entirely funded by parents whose child had taken their own life.
Life with ADHD can be tough, but it can also be amazing. There are amazing actors, politicians, chefs, entrepreneurs, sportspeople with ADHD. People at the top of their game.
We want to remove the blocks and get more people with ADHD to their own success.Almost everyone I meet, who suspects ADHD and wants a diagnosis, has had a life struggling and wants to move to job and life security. A diagnosis is a path away from benefits not towards them.
A diagnosis provides the knowledge that allows you swim in line with your difference instead of against it.It is only difficult being different. But it is only difficult because people like these attackers make it so. Please support us and help us in standing up against them.
Henry Shelford is CEO and Co-Founder of the charity ADHD UK. He has ADHD.
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