Take it from someone with ADHD – we’re not all lazy attention-seekers

ADHD is the perfect target for today’s media, but claiming the surge in diagnoses is just a “trend” won’t help today’s workforce, writes Simon Neville

During the industrial revolution the first workplace provisions were introduced to, in short, stop workers from dying. Back then, it was seen as bad form to keep having to replace staff who were dying from back-breaking work or getting their arms sliced off by heavy machinery. Health and safety reforms came in, limbs and livelihoods were saved, and productivity improved.

Today, most of us work behind a desk. We are a services economy where the chances of dying in an industrial accident sit somewhere between winning the lottery and saving enough for a house deposit by cutting back on Netflix and avocado toast. Yet whilst our physical health in the workplace is well protected, the biggest issue facing us, as highlighted by the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) data, is long-term sickness.

According to the numbers, 2.8m people are out of work with long-term illness, with a sizeable amount not working due to mental health conditions. Not too long ago, I reckon I could easily have been one of those statistics and the way things are going, I could be soon.

That’s because I spent the first 35 years of my life swinging wildly through various episodes of poor mental health, popping antidepressants for a decade and relentlessly castigating myself for not managing to fit in. In work, the self-loathing gave me enough drive to reach the upper-echelons of the media industry and I got by on adrenaline, but I knew the pattern well.

Every few years I would burn out, get signed off, find a new job, excel in it, burn out, then get signed off again. On and on it went.

But in 2020 I got diagnosed with ADHD after questioning whether depression was a symptom, rather than the cause of my problems. I no longer take antidepressants – I have ADHD medication instead – and I have greater control both personally and professionally.

I am aware of my strengths and weaknesses and can confidently say no amount of training will ever make me more organised or get my timesheets done. Organisational training for me is the equivalent of telling a blind person to eat more carrots or teaching a five-foot shop worker to be taller so they can stack the top shelves because “everyone else has to”.

But I do know my skills lie with my processing abilities and having a fast brain – powered by a Ferrari with only bicycle brakes to stop it. Struggles remain and I often feel stuck in a video game on expert mode, whilst everyone else is on the walk-thru setting. And I know the patterns of old never go away completely, but my ability to control them can increase through hard work.

As Kat Brown explains in her excellent book It’s Not A Bloody Trend, spending your childhood being labelled “lazy”, “distracted” and “unfocused” requires huge amounts of processing and grieving, which is never linear. Those childhood tropes leave you believing others might have a point. Maybe I am lazy? Maybe I am just attention seeking? Getting the diagnosis helps you step away from the lifetime of gaslighting and live life fully.

So, to read endless commentary that directly questions my experience – and the estimated 2m others with the condition – by playing into those exact same misconceptions that caused me so much difficulty in the past, seems utterly perverse.

Those stories are typically prefaced with “overdiagnosis is destroying the NHS and economy by creating workshy benefit claimants”. The irony is, each time I read one, it takes me a step closer to fulfilling their premise.

I understand. ADHD is the perfect target for today’s media. The condition over-indexes in creative industries, meaning actors, artists and celebrities (but, strangely, not newsrooms) are more likely to have it. It fits perfectly into the “woke celebrities raising awareness and confusing young minds” narrative.

I must’ve missed the memo that says raising awareness of a medical condition is a bad thing these days. Even Mel Stride, secretary of state for work and pensions, reckons mental health culture – whatever that means – may have “gone too far” saying “we need to look carefully at whether we are beginning to label or medicalise conditions that in the past would have been seen as the ups and downs of life.”

But my question is this – if the government wants people to return to work, would it not be prudent to actually engage with the question of why poor mental health remains a barrier to work for so many? Would it not make more sense to properly fund mental health services so those who need it can find the support and get back to the workplace as quickly as possible?

I know that ADHD isn’t a mental health condition, but a neurological one that impacts certain aspects of my life. What I also know is that without the right support it can quickly lead to poor mental health if not treated properly. But whilst we keep slipping back into the mindset that people with neurological conditions are somehow deficient, lazy and should just suck it up, how can we ever get a thriving workforce and achieve the growing economy everyone agrees we need?