“Lots of young boys are being diagnosed,” she says, “and we are concerned they are being given labels when they are just immature or not very interested in schoolwork.” Do they have a boisterous child, or perhaps one who’s easily bored, or is there something else, something deeper and harder to manage, that means there is no parenting fix but instead a neurodevelopment disorder in need of medical attention and educational support? Or could a medicalised route stigmatise a child or make them feel “abnormal”?Ī lawyer in Oxfordshire, who is a mother to a nine-year-old boy with ADHD, wrote to say a medical diagnosis had not helped him, but rather encouraged him to “play the part of a child with ADHD to perfection”. In addition to this complicated institutional landscape, with its forest of acronyms, there is often also the parents’ own ambivalence and misgivings. Moreover, even if an EHCP is enacted, it won’t entitle the child to the ameliorating drugs that can only be prescribed as a result of a medical diagnosis – for which there are the painfully long waiting times. Schools have the power to request a local authority assessment that could lead to an EHCP, but their willingness to do so and the readiness of local authorities to respond differs enormously across the country. It’s not necessary for a child to obtain a medical diagnosis to gain special help at school (although it often helps). In this time, they are being failed and not achieving their potential.” Children are waiting ridiculous times for assessment – three years plus. Two years was the length most often quoted, but there are areas of the country in which the time is said to be much longer.Īs one mother in Sussex, who waited two and half years for a diagnosis for her child, put it: “Parents complain all the time about the child and adolescent mental health services and the problems are caused by years of underfunding. Nearly everyone complained about the same thing: the waiting time to get a diagnosis. The response was large, impassioned, eloquent and bristling with frustration. No one is sure about the figures relating to children because there is no system in operation that tracks children seeking treatment, but several child and adolescent psychiatrists I spoke to reported double, triple or quadruple numbers.īack in March the Observer asked readers who were parents of children with ADHD to share their experiences of negotiating the educational and medical systems. The monthly average number of NHS patients receiving ADHD drugs increased by nearly 18% from 2020 to 2021. “Parents felt driven to get a diagnosis, driven to request an EHCP assessment, because they thought that was the only remedy,” says Freeman.Įarlier this year, Dr Tony Lloyd of the ADHD Foundation charity suggested there has been a 400% increase in the number of adults seeking diagnosis since 2020. Garry Freeman, a special educational needs and disabilities consultant, says that the lockdowns between March 2020 and summer 2021 left a lot of children with special needs – schools were kept open only for those with an education, health and care plan (EHCP) – without necessary social interaction and educational support. In among this knot of information there is one fact that is beyond dispute: the rapid increase in children and adults seeking diagnosis in recent years, particularly since the Covid pandemic and its lockdowns. You don’t see any greater event that precipitates your understanding that there’s something wrong Lawrence Norfolk, novelist It’s the hyperactive-impulsive form that features most prominently in popular characterisations of ADHD, while inattention, unsurprisingly, gains the least attention. The disorder is divided into three types: predominant hyperactivity and impulsivity (about 15%), predominant inattention (about 20-30%) and a combination of hyperactivity-impulsivity and inattention (more than half of the total). In children, these may manifest themselves as excessive talking, fidgeting, trouble waiting in line and difficulty following direction. The disorder, as defined by the US psychiatric bible the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, features many different symptoms, including carelessness and lack of attention to detail, restlessness and edginess, starting new tasks before finishing old ones, poor organisational skills and the inability to focus or prioritise. Whatever decisions are taken or not taken on their behalf can have a lasting impact. While adults with the condition can make informed choices about diagnosis and drug treatment and going public, children are in a more vulnerable position, caught up in rapid physical and mental change, educational deadlines and normative social pressures. If all this doubt and confusion can leave people with the condition feeling unseen or disbelieved, it also adds to the bewilderment many parents experience when dealing with the possibility that their child may have ADHD.
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