New NHS England data has estimated that almost 2.5m people in England are likely to have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Some degree of salt-pinching is needed here as figures were developed using pre-existing estimates from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), which suggests that around three to four per cent of adults and five per cent of children and young people have ADHD.
The new data also suggests that more than half a million people (549,000) in England were waiting for an ADHD assessment at the end of March 2025. This is up from 416,000 a year earlier at the end of March 2024, so we can probably expect further “villain of the week” headlines about how the “worried well” are wasting NHS resources and how “everyone wants a diagnosis” these days.
In March, a study by the University of Huddersfield and Aston University showed that ADHD prescriptions had risen 18 per cent year on year since the pandemic which led to headlines of a “scam” around ADHD diagnosis, and the usual sympathetic calls for people not to be so pathetic and to Just Get On With It. This is despite there being a 50 per cent rise in prescriptions between 2007 and 2012 – coincidentally, around the time the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence released its new guidelines on ADHD. Awareness and understanding usually lead to an increase in treatment.
The response is the same as that around the rise in treatment for depression in the 2010s when the likes of Stephen Fry were jeered at for speaking up. “We’re all a little bit [insert name of condition here],” is often rolled out, to which I am always tempted to reply, stop being childish about stuff you can’t be bothered to learn about like an adult. This applies to reading beyond the headlines, to our dear orange friend in the White House, and it certainly applies to health conditions. We all go to the loo, but if you’re going to the loo 100 times a day, there’s a problem.
This response makes me especially cross as the same day that study was released, I had been speaking to recipients of PIP – personal independence payments – about the government’s benefits reforms, which include a slightly mystifying determination to Get Everyone Back Into Work (I have yet to hear a genuine explanation of what can be done for people who cannot work) and freezing PIP. These payments are not related to work but are used to help offset the additional costs of being disabled. They also have a zero per cent fraud rate.
A young powerchair user, also an Oxford finalist, described a cognitive dissonance: “They can’t conceive of somebody that they deem to be productive in society – getting a degree or working – also doing something they deem to be unproductive – requiring support and benefits.”
This seems to be what happens here. Without physical “evidence”, some people think they are making it up, or that people with difficult health conditions should only be living saints in hospital beds, rather than people getting on with their lives in our communities. People with ADHD differ in whether they consider it a disability, usually because how much it impacts their lives depends on the structures they already have in place. Part of the huge rise in people seeking assessment since the pandemic is that the lockdowns instantly removed people’s coping mechanisms. Middle-aged adults are also often assessed when their children go through assessment and every question sets off alarms for themselves.
When people say, “There wasn’t all this in my day,” the answer is usually: there was, but it wasn’t considered “nice” – so people didn’t admit to it. ADHD has been described in medical literature since the 1700s. As recently as the 1950s, autism in children was blamed on mothers being “cold and distant”. People were named unmentionable words or kept apart from society. (We cannot feel too lofty about our progress here. A 2024 investigation by Mencap and ITV found that the NHS was spending over half a billion pounds a year locking up 2,000 autistic people or with a learning disability in England – many of whom should have been in community care.)
I compare the rise in ADHD diagnoses with the stats around left-handed people, which averaged around 3 per cent in the 1900s – and rose sharply from the 1910s and stabilising in the 1960s – coincidentally, around the time that left-handed children stopped having their hands tied behind their back.
Discrimination against any vulnerable community stems from fear: “I don’t want this near me because I know how society treats them.” Well, what if this were you, or your family? As The National columnist Paul Kavanagh told me this week: “The disabled are the only minority group that anybody can become a part of at any time.” Kavanagh was perfectly fit and healthy until he suffered a stroke in October 2020. Due to ambulance shortages from Covid, he suffered life-changing injuries which have left him with limited mobility, unable to use one arm, and with multiple lifelong conditions. He was still turned down for PIP at first, and when he rang to appeal, he was given the veiled threat that his appeal risked him losing his benefits.
Peer support through social media can help but it has limits, which is why people are waiting for up to 10 years for an assessment. That said, I “self-diagnosed” with hip problems and went to my GP, which led to my hip replacement. Nobody said a word about that. Nobody says anything about going to your GP if you’re worried about a lump, quite rightly. We know people with cancer. We know people with depression. You probably know someone with a lot more going on too. And for anyone doubtfully saying, “There’s no smoke without fire.” There is if there’s someone with a socking great gas canister going, “Look over there!”
Our society distrusts difference. We have long stigmatised differences as a sign of the Devil or God, rather than old Barbara down the street who likes a good cheese. It’s only by providing support, by advocating, explaining, and bringing these stories into people’s homes, as Strictly Come Dancing does every year and Heidi Thomas with Down syndrome actors in Call the Midwife – even as Princess Diana did with Aids patients and landmine victims in the 1990s – that we see others as people and stop being afraid. Afraid of them, and our own shortcomings.
Kat Brown is the author of ‘It’s Not a Bloody Trend: Understanding Life as an ADHD Adult’, published by Robinson
