I'm sorry, but ADHD has become a scam that is wildly overdiagnosed and an excuse for poor behaviour

It’s the new joke, isn’t it? Hands up anyone who doesn’t have ADHD! Or, am I the only person here who doesn’t have ADHD? And the joke is all the more exquisite in London.

It turns out that it’s here that there’s been the highest increase in the rate of prescriptions for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder over the course of four years, from 2020 to last year. Researchers have found that while rates over that time have gone up across the country, in London they’ve really spiked: the annual rate of increase is 28 per cent, followed by South East England, where the annual increase is nearly a fifth.

So, why is it that nationally, 25 people in every thousand were getting an ADHD prescription in 2020 and more than 44 are getting it now? And why is it that London is at the front of this particular trend? Is it that the pace of life has rocketed so dangerously over this time – cost of living, febrile world order, climate crisis, smartphone dependency … all that stuff?

My own view is that it’s part of the current, worrying trend to medicalise the human condition, whereby habits and dispositions that used to be attributable to character or circumstances are now seen as something to be solved by the pharmaceutical industry. And if we’re talking about dangerous habits that make for attention disorder, look no further than your smartphone, a device which could have been, and almost certainly was, designed to make us incapable of concentrating on one thing for minutes on end.

If the Government wants to address the ADHD problem among young people, it can think again about its decision not to oblige schools to ban smartphones. But only this month, it shelved exactly this proposal.

And then there’s the continuing fallout from lockdown five years ago. Is it actually the case that the numbers of us who, say, procrastinate or show poor impulse control (both symptoms), has gone up by over 40 per cent in four years? Or has lockdown exacerbated our tendency to blame our problems on a mental health condition. In Sweden, which didn’t lockdown, the numbers of people alleging mental health problems fell rather than increased as it did here. You can see by the way I’ve put the question where my thought is going.

But there’s another aspect to the condition. It would seem that more people, especially in the savvy capital, have worked out that this particular disorder can actually be rather useful. My own daughter, for instance, established with the diabolical ingenuity of urban youth that she could get an extra 15 minutes for each paper when she sits her A levels if she were diagnosed with ADHD. She urged me to remember how she flits from one subject to another; I told her that she had the attention span of a gnat and if she put her wretched phone away, she’d crack it.

But the problem goes further. ADHD is, for instance, not only one of the most popular grounds for obtaining that useful state benefit, Personal Independence Payments – it’s number 14 of the 500 grounds for claiming – but for obtaining it at an enhanced level.

In 2023, there were 52,989 people with people claiming PIP who gave ADHD as their main problem. Now PIP is rather a useful payment. You can get it even if you’re working, have savings or are getting other benefits. The amount you can be paid is dependent on the impact your health condition or disability has on your ability to do day-to-day tasks. So the more your ability is impaired – the more money you will receive.

And of the people claiming it on ADHD grounds, almost half, or 43 per cent, obtain it at an enhanced rate. The standard rate is £73.10 a week from next month; the enhanced rate is £110.40. So for those who are keen to supplement their income from state benefits, ADHD is quite a handy route. Granted there are many people who genuinely suffer from the condition, but if you were unscrupulous about putting in a claim, it’s not that hard.

Looking at one of those handy websites that assist benefits claimants, including PIP, I find that there’s a checklist of ten activities that are affected by the condition, from preparing food to engaging with people, with examples of how ADHD might compromise your difficulties in dealing with them. And reader, I rather think that I could make a very decent claim myself.

For instance: “Procrastination linked to ADHD may mean you keep putting off preparing food until you are so hungry that you just eat whatever is quickest, like a bowl of cereal, so you need prompting to prepare a meal. … You may need prompting to eat cooked food because you are so engaged in other activities or thoughts that you will not spare the time to consume anything but biscuits and coffee.”

I think, reader, that we are looking here at the condition of pretty well any working parent. Which of us hasn’t reached for a bowl of Shreddies or Ben and Jerry’s rather than cooking when we’re up against it?

Or “because of poor impulse control you may frequently speak aloud thoughts that cause offence to other people, so you need social support.” Look, this is pretty well why I have fewer friends than I should. I cannot keep my trap shut. I sound off in a fashion that tends to lose friends and alienate people. And they call that ADHD?

Like every benefit, there are websites and support for those making a claim, and ploughing through the 37-page application, and for supporting those appealing against rejection. You can take a test online to see if you can produce ADHD symptoms.

With so many incentives to be diagnosed with ADHD the surprise is not that so many Londoners have an ADHD diagnosis but that so many don’t. If the system is skewed to privilege those with a condition, then it will benefit the deserving, but also those whose claims are a little more tenuous. And this, in brief, dear reader, is why the Government is today getting on with its crackdown on sickness benefits, including mental illness benefits.

So, hands up if you don’t have ADHD? Anyone?

Melanie McDonagh is a London Standard columnist