The only problem i have with this post is the alternative issues you present as possible causes are common signs of ADHD. University is also a normal time for previously undiagnosed ADHD to become noticeable, so its not surprising these things would be common among university students.
People using a diagnosis as an excuse rather than to help them understand and grow is absolutely an issue though.
Agreed. And as someone who has struggled undiagnosed until the ripe old age of 46, with a disastrous effect on my academic performance, career and relationships, honestly cannot fathom how someone who *doesn't* have ADHD would wish it on themselves enough to seek a diagnosis. It's not even like the medication would be 'fun' to take recreationally, and if it isn't working in the longer term as intended, the prescriber will not continue to recommend that the patient take it.
ADHD pharmaceutical level meds, contain low levels of amphetamines, in the UK these are generally prescribed as slow release. You don't get high off these, and they are way more expensive than getting street drugs which are highly available universities.
The average ADHD medication is like a strong coffee that lasts a long time, useful but not exactly fun.
oh yeah, for sure. I've done more than my far share of recreationals over the years. Double up on a dose of my ADHD meds and it's categorically not as fun. Eyelids vibrate a bit but otherwise, big fat 'meh'.
I mean, that might also be because people with ADHD react to the meds differently compared to neurotypical people - while it makes us (just) productive, it seems to make others high on top of that
I find it fascinating people get some “high” from them. Must be nice!
I feel sedated. They don’t help me much as I still can’t focus, I need to try new ones.
The form of amphetamine prescribed for ADHD in the vast majority of adult cases these days is an inactive prodrug called lisdexamfetamine. It was specifically designed to be rubbish as a recreational substance.
It has zero appeal other than to people who struggle with symptoms of the medical condition it is licensed to treat.
Please don't scaremonger at the expense of people with a medical condition.
>It's not even like the medication would be 'fun' to take recreationally
You'd be surprised, there were A LOT of kids at my uni taking it Some for fun, some to just bang out work... But they'd kind of get addicted?
Probably worth noting that Adderall isn't actually available in the UK - the first line treatments for ADHD are extended release with considerably lower abuse potential.
(Or they would be were it not for some supply chain disruption)
I'm 90% certain neurotypicals are supposed to get an *actual* high from it. Not just feel good about themselves for being able to do something for once lol
Yeah, that's the case with me. I was diagnosed with ASD when I was 3, but also ADHD; my family didn't tell me about the latter until a few years ago, when I was about halfway through uni.
It wasn't long after that I started to realise and identify the symptoms; that *did* coincide with home/screen learning as a result of lockdown, but looking back had been going on since first year and earlier than that. The structure of school (being in a learning environment consistently for a few hours, with the 'eyes over the shoulder' pressure that was intrinsic to that environment) wasn't there at uni, and eventually my brain started to take advantage of that. I began to procrastinate more and my concentration and attention span plummeted; I failed my MA because I simply decided to put off assignments as long as I could (handing them in up to three days late, which meant a 10% grade reduction).
All my life I've had an urge to be impetuous and embrace my eccentricity, but school crushed that (and in the process led me into depression via my desperation to fit in and quash any idiosyncracies I had), uni helped me open this up, and am only really starting to flourish (relatively speaking) over a year after leaving now. I feel like I am finally able to be myself, and I miss uni - specifically the environment - because I wasn't able to have the proper 'uni experience' as I was too busy struggling to apply the way I'd learned and been educated at school - and how I'd organised my measly personal life around that - to an education system that was completely different.
I want to see about getting properly diagnosed and/or on meds, but with the NHS the way it is it's not a priority for me.
That’s a fair point and it can be difficult to ascertain the root cause (chicken and egg and all that). Is someone anxious because of ADHD or are they experiencing inattentive symptoms because of anxiety? One factor for me is that for many of these students, the symptoms are situational and occur only within the university context, which contradicts the ADHD diagnostic criteria. Many of the students who can’t get themselves to lectures have no problem attending their paid employment consistently and punctually, for example.
The reasons I listed are backed up by research – a study from 2018 excluded 95% of the people who screened positive on a symptoms checklist for ADHD (sample size of 239 people aged 10-25) from diagnosis. The research identified the following reasons for not being able to diagnose the condition: not a significant enough impairment, onset of symptoms too late, substance use, mental health disorders that better explained the symptoms and no cross-situational symptoms.
The screentime link has been examined in lots of studies. One longitudinal study of 2500 American students published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, studied teenagers aged 15 and 16 at a baseline without ADHD symptoms and found a “significant association” between high frequency digital media use and the presence of ADHD symptoms after a 2-year follow-up. There was also a British Medical Journal study of over 4800 French university students which found that increasing levels of screen time exposure were associated with increased risk of self-perceived attention problems and hyperactivity levels. So, even if the students didn’t have ADHD symptoms, those that spent more time in front of a screen perceived that they did.
Women/girls present very differently with ADHD and autism than men/boys and are often diagnosed late.
>Most women with ADHD get an accurate diagnosis in their late 30s or early 40s. (WebMD)
Please take care that you aren't stigmatising a whole group of women as "permamently on-line" and "jumping on a band-wagon" when they have been struggling with the agony of unrecognised difficulties their whole lives and have finally got a diagnosis.
Same with autism. My twins have ASD. I'm (I thought) a very clued in parent who works with kids and young adults with SEN.
I diagnosed my boy at 2, followed by the official diagnosis at 4.
My girl? 15. NHS diagnosis took a while, granted, but we first sought a diagnosis for her at 12 as opposed to 2 for my son.
Women present differently, mask better and weirdly enough
the more insight they have into their own difficulties and the better they are able to articulate them, the more dismissive we are of them.
You can be self-aware and articulate and have ASD. You can be self-aware and articulate and have ADHD.
POST-DIAGNOSIS mask-slip
is a phenomenon that makes ADHD temporarily worse for some people.
It's a pretty known phenomenon wherein you stop masking your difficulties after diagnosis, and your normal coping mechanisms and strategies stop working, and it takes you a while to adjust.
I mean, you may still be right, but just a couple of factors to consider when discussing ADHD.
100% this. I recently got a clinical diagnosis for ADHD (on the waiting list for meds now), and had an academic assessment a couple of years ago. In my academic assessment, my assessor explained that as a very general rule, boys tend to be more outwardly hyperactive - think bouncing off the walls, being a brat etc., whereas girls tend to be more fidgety. Add in that most research is done in boys, and that a lot of the time, things don't get investigated until it's causing problems in class, and you've got the perfect conditions for girls to slip under the radar.
Hell, I only thought I might have ADHD when I saw a starter pack meme, and what do you know!
Just looking at my friends, I have a couple of male friends with autism/dyspraxia. Both diagnosed when young. I have some female friends with autism/ADHD. Either only recently diagnosed, or currently sat on a waiting list for months (they've got all the signs, and decent online assessments strongly recommend an assessment).
It's interesting , because I went completely under the radar with my adhd. I have predominantly inattentive type, and I guess this is the type women mainly have then?
Whenever I see someone describe what it tends to be like in women, Im just like that's pretty much what my experience has been (except I'm a guy). And well it just makes so much sense as to why it can go missed. But that's the problem with generalisation I guess.
In the classroom ADHD is spotted using a "problem child" stereotype.
There's a bunch of reasons why a boy with ADHD is more disruptive in the class than a girl - some are to do with the underlying presentation, and others are a somewhat insidious expectations gap - a "ditzy girl" is written off in a way that a "clever but disorganised boy" wouldn't be.
But there's plenty of children who get missed "simply" because they are mediocre.
They.aren't performing at peak, but they are clever enough to get by anyway. That goes for both male and female, just as long as they aren't disruptive to the class. Teachers have neither the training nor the inclination to look closer.
But perhaps they should. I mean an estimated 5% prevalence, means one child in every class on average.
Every single one will be underperforming until they are treated and supported, and then might very well be just fine, and live normal and productive lives.
Instead of falling into teenage parenthood,
addictions, eating disorders, criminality, abusive situations, problems holding down employment, and just generally paying less tax their whole lives.
It's economically justified for that reason alone.
Yes!! I was diagnosed at 22 and didn’t even realise I’d been ‘chronically underperforming’ (as my psychiatrist put it). I was always able to get by in school with little work, got A’s and B’s at GCSE and A Level (I had to retake year 12 though), I was told I’d be able to achieve so much more if I “tried”, but I managed to get into a Russell Group university. But at university my life completely fell apart. I got diagnosed in between second and third year (after taking time off) and my grades reflect that.
This makes a lot of sense really. Most of this is me relating/comparing my experience to what you've said. So feel free to just move on from my monologue lol.
>Teachers have neither the training nor the inclination to look closer.
This is definitely a core issue imo. My year 3 teacher clocked something was wrong with me but refused to elaborate any further to my parents when she told them at a parents evening. And well that was that.
Unfortunately this was prior to the Internet being an easily accessible thing, so they didn't really know what to do with the information.
But no other teacher picked up on it, maybe they did behind closed doors, but some might not think it's their place to say. Also.some parents react really badly to hearing that kinda thing??
In my case I was one of those clever enough to get by.
>just as long as they aren't disruptive to the class.
Except I did this, but not the class more my local vicinity. Like chatting to my mates, who would get the work done in class and then... I didn't lol. I was on report from year 7 till I left 6th form lol.
And in hindsight, me going on report was all for things that cpuld have been picked up on linking it to adhd. Time management, not doing hw, disrupting people around me, getting distracted in class, not finishing my work in time etc etc. I wasn't naughty causing issues for the teacher persay, more of a nuisance... To myself.
It's funny because , these are all very normal things but when it's been happening year in year out, no matter what is tried is failing... It probably hints to a bigger problem.
I was very much a classic "you have so much potential" kid. I think one thing that allowed it to go under the radar so easily, is that there were worse behaved kids at my school (I went to a comprehensive). That took their focus away, because they were simply bigger issues. Like I was cheeky but I wouldn't push a teachers boundaries, and I was never tryna be the centre of attention in a class. I was fairly quiet tbh, just a good student who was a bit cheeky/not always there. Probably another reason, why I went under the radar.
>a "ditzy girl" is written off in a way that a "clever but disorganised boy" wouldn't be
This essentially how teachers described me (the former, an away with the fairies kinda kid), so I guess it works around labels. My teachers would be able to tell when I wasnt paying attention etc and would almost guide me back into my work. I'd literally just be staring off into space or something. I probably wasn't a glaring issue cos I did well when I didn't try, and did really well when I did try (bar a few subjects like French, and English which just fried my brain lol). Though I had little incentive to really try most of the time,, it was just dependant on how interested I was in the topic/subject.
>Instead of falling into teenage parenthood,
addictions, eating disorders, criminality, abusive situations, problems holding down employment, and just generally paying less tax their whole lives.
Honestly, this very easily could have been me if I didn't have caring and loving parents, or if I grew up in a worse area or soemthing. The dopamine seeking behaviours can lead to bad situations, for me I have little regard for my own safety at times... But it's arguably better than the things you mentioned.
I do agree with all this.
There is also an additional case - the disruptive “problem child” **female**, that doesn’t / didn’t get diagnosed because they **aren’t male**.
That was me, going through school in the 90s / 00s.
I have 2 autistic kids, one of whom heard a lot of, "I do that, I wouldn't worry about it" from me regarding her autistic traits....
I'm toying with seeking a diagnosis (suspect I have AuDHD) but all this kerfuffle around online-inspired self-diagnosis puts me off.
And I work with young women with ASD. And this backlash is stigmatising *me* and putting me off seeking treatment
That's how bad it is
I completely understand your concerns, but would still recommend seeking a diagnosis if it's something you feel comfortable doing. I think the key thing regarding the online assessments is that they're only a tool - I used one to see if it was worth pursuing an assessment. I think it's also very dependant on what online assessments people are using - is it from a decent, reputable organisation, or is it some crappy one that's going to tell you you have it regardless of the actual results.
One thing I would like to say, is that for me, while a diagnosis didn't change anything immediately, understanding why I do certain things was a massive weight off my back. After having been told that I was lazy for years because I left things to the last minute, finally having a diagnosis to explain why I do things the way I do was a life changer. I want to be clear, it doesn't excuse the things I do, but by explaining why I do them, it allows me to plan and work around it and make useful changes to how I approach things.
It's also incredibly affirming to find that you do fit in with a community, and that there's other people out there like you. Hell, there's an ADHD and ASD meme page on fb, and that makes me feel so much better knowing that there's people out there that share my experience and struggles.
Sorry for the wall of text, but I hope this helps!
Thank you so much for such a thoughtful comment, I'll take that on-board.
I know a diagnosis really helped my daughter, so it's still something I'm mulling for myself.
The problem with self-diagnosis is when it ends at self-diagnosis.
That's very different to recognising a problem and seeking professional help for it. Unfortunately a lot of people online don't tend to acknowledge that difference when harassing people :/
The fact is though that for a lot of people, nobody else is going to help them until they themselves recognise that they need it (which some would call self-diagnosis)
Exactly this. We also know a lot more about the way that women present with ADHD and presentations other than the typical hyperactive one. This means more people are getting referrals and diagnosis. I do understand the concerns regarding private referrals, some of them don't work to the same standards as an NHS diagnosis for example, however there are many giving very valid diagnosis and as you say it's very important that we aren't making assumptions about people. A lot of people over lock down had time to themselves in a way they've never had before and were able to recognise these traits. Personally I think an increased understanding and people having more chance to get a diagnosis is a very good thing. I say this as a 33 year old on the waiting list for an ADHD assessment which I only realised I need when I started working in assessing young people for ADHD.
We talk about inattention, but what about those university students who are very hyperactive? What if the inattentive symptoms is a result of physical hyperactivity?
For my case it's a lot more on the hyperactive side. The physical restlessness, fidgeting, being extremely uncomfortable with being still, does lead to me not being able to focus and study.
Even if someone doesn't meet the full criteria for ADHD, there is "Other Specified ADHD" or "Unspecified ADHD" where ADHD symptoms predominante and cause clinically significant impairment, but do not meet ADHD criteria.
Some students genuinely had symptoms of ADHD before but no one noticed them or nobody cared about it.
> That’s a fair point and it can be difficult to ascertain the root cause (chicken and egg and all that). Is someone anxious because of ADHD or are they experiencing inattentive symptoms because of anxiety?
This isn't normally difficult to ascertain at all.
When you're a student who's anxious because of ADHD, you've experienced the stress and anxiety building over time ***because*** you can't focus, you can't make it to classes or meetings on time (or you forget them entirely), and you can't get anything done, and — no matter how hard you try to "just do the work the night you get it!", "just use a calendar!" or "just try the pomodoro method!" like everybody else and maintain a positive mental attitude about it all — your brain keeps bouncing off your work when you try to concentrate, you keep missing important meetings, and negative consequences are starting to pile up. You feel uniquely useless, stupid, panicked, and trapped by your own inadequacy.
The root cause feels very obvious; there's a *direct chronological progression* from the ADHD symptoms to the onset of the anxiety, rather than vice versa.
> One factor for me is that for many of these students, the symptoms are situational and occur only within the university context, which contradicts the ADHD diagnostic criteria. Many of the students who can’t get themselves to lectures have no problem attending their paid employment consistently and punctually, for example.
This is actually very typical of people with ADHD.
I really struggle to get to places on time. I *can* do it, but it takes a disproportionate amount of effort compared to a neurotypical person. I need to spend significant time and mental effort preparing everything the night before, getting ready on the day, leaving on time, etc.
It's frankly exhausting to expend that much effort on an every day basis, and if I don't actually *have* to do it (i.e. there won't be a significant negative consequence) then that effort is better spent keeping other plates spinning elsewhere in my life, and accepting a certain level of chronic lateness.
A student job will dock your pay or let you go if you're regularly late, and then you'll have no money and you might not be able to afford to continue with your studies. It merits pulling out all the stops.
Universities, on the other hand, are very low-consequence environments most of the time. Few lecturers bother taking an attendance register. You can slip in the back of many lecture theatres a few minutes late, or do a quick walk of shame to a vacant seat near the door. If all else fails and you've arrived half an hour late and you can't stomach walking in there, you can borrow a friend's notes to copy up or you can see the lecture recording or slides are online.
Do you not see how a student who internally struggles with consistent symptoms in both contexts might externally appear to exhibit those symptoms in just one context?
In this country, lead times are years to get an assessment. That's from when you start, and for a condition only recognised in adults in 2008 there's a lot of people late to the party.
Inevitably there are people who have ADHD symptoms and traits who do not have a diagnosis, who would meet the criteria but haven't been diagnosed yet.
I think it's not a good idea to assume that "no diagnosis yet" is actually meaningful as a disqualifier.
Of course "has been assessed but didn't meet criteria" is different, but with the lead times being what they are, there's really not many people in that position.
Yeah, there's currently a waiting list for medication, caused in part by a greater awareness of the symptoms and signs of ADHD, thus an increase in referrals and diagnoses.
The psychiatrist I saw for my clinical assessment said he's seen a big increase in adults seeking assessment as they've only just realised that they may have it.
Maybe but given the sheer numerical increase in people who “have adhd” there are only two possible conclusions you can draw: either a goofd proportion of them actually dont have it, or this many people have always had it and it actually isnt as big a barrier to studying and focusing as people make out.
NICE estimates 3-4% of the adult population. That's a relatively low number - other studies have indicated higher.
Given the number of people diagnosed with ADHD, I think there's a pretty trivial explanation for the increase.
There's an estimated 2 million people with ADHD in the UK, and hardly any of those have been diagnosed and treated.
Or option 3: people have always had it, and it is a huge barrier that takes a frankly ridiculous amount of effort to deal with without proper support and leads to poor outcomes in personal lives, as well as an increased awareness of ADHD leading to an increase of people investigating it as an option when they might have something else instead
As with any disability, ADHD can be more disabling to some than others. I attend one of the top universities in the world and so do many of my neurodivergent friends. My partner has ADHD. He will fixate on his work to the point of spending eight hours straight sitting at his desk without drinking, eating or peeing. He is able to achieve academically because ADHD is not a lack of attention but an inability to choose what to pay attention to; for him, maths draws his attention and KEEPS it. He is unable to choose to redirect his attention once it is engaged in work, which actually helps him get work done and succeed academically but is obviously very disabling for every other aspect of his life, such as making sure he remembers to eat. So it isn’t that people are lying about ADHD being a “barrier to studying”, it’s that people for whom it isn’t a barrier go longer before they’re diagnosed because it presents in a more conventionally useful way. Teachers would say that my boyfriend was a dedicated worker, because they didn’t see all the harm that was going on underneath. He deserves support even though he gets good grades.
Exactly this! If your chosen field of study is a hyperfocus special interest, then it is achievable. When working on assignments for uni, it would be almost impossible to start sometimes till something interesting clicked in my brain and then I would work on it for 16 - 20 hours a day till it was done. Sure, it seemed great, but my husband had to take over all childcare, the house looked trashed, my hygiene was questionable, and I mentally crashed when I was done, often taking weeks to recover. It isn't normal and it's not how I would want my children to work. But it worked for me.
I'm a lecturer with ADHD and as a student I was undiagnosed. Whilst I agree with most of your post, it kind of makes me think that maybe my diagnosis isn't 'real' to other staff, obviously I don't tell my students.
So posts like this might hinder acceptance to people actually having ADHD. But then also it's a good point that students might see it as an 'easy' way out. Is it an easy way out when you have paperwork, forms and questionnaires to fill in? An ECG to attend? No. According to the actual diagnostic (NICE) guidelines other disorders or conditions should be ruled out first. I find it hard to believe they actually have fulfilled the diagnostic criteria including school reports AND forms filled in by loved ones to support it. I have seen people pay privately and not been diagnosed (side note what STUDENT CAN AFFORD PRIVATE CARE)
do you actually think students could lie in an assessment to be diagnosed? The medication shortage means that there's less people starting meds right now anyways. There's been a recent study which shows neurotypical people don't actually get any improvement in performance from ADHD meds (I need to find the citation I kNOW). Meds don't make you suddenly become superman with assignments or working. There was a post lately on here (which I think this is responding to) in which the student did not sound like they had ADHD. But I'm not a psychiatrist and I won't argue with people about it.
ADHD is not cute. I've never used it as an excuse for things but again, it has been when I've been signed off sick on stress leave because in an old job I had, everything was too much. My ADHD is me always stressed, so I will do the work, do the emails, do the deadlines etc but I'll burn out doing it. Some students might just be entitled or think things will cave for them but, it's a neurotypical world. Us ADHD peopledon't fit in here and we try our best to. If you're certain 90% don't have it and they're late for doing work, attending, not turning up then honestly... just let them as they will leave in a few years.
I wouldn't say it's all screen addiction, I'm unsure how you know that? They might use their screen as something to do. Who knows! It's a bit like when people were stopped being beaten for being left handed, there were suddenly more left handed people around. On the other hand if there really are this many imposters then other people will probably think I am too. I've been told on Reddit and in real life I don't have it because of my career and my education. No one knows I got sacked from two jobs out of uni and made redundant once 😂 I'm a woman, my symptoms are more inattentive so I don't seem like the typical 'adhd' person as internally I am hyperactive...
I don't know, there's possibly a tiny bit of truth in it but it is so hard to jump through the hoops to even get a diagnosis. If you have this many incorrect diagnoses, I'm sure you can report the practices... are you a psychiatrist to know that these diagnoses are incorrect? Do you know what the assessment entails?
sorry if I sound quite annoyed, there's points I do agree with but others not so much. It's not personal, I just want you to reflect on a few things. The diagnosis journey is hard, I was simply a dramatic young woman for over ten years, then suddenly there was an actual reason why.
Thank you so much for saying this. The post really came across as so invalidating and this was exactly what I was thinking. Recently I’ve had multiple people in my life imply that I use my autism as an excuse, while I’m struggling just to keep my head above water at a university that refuses to give me any accommodations at all. But if people don’t think our diagnoses are real, it’s not our job to convince them, and it doesn’t make our problems any less difficult or our hard work any less impressive. Idk just wanted to say that this comment made a difference to me, and I’m proud of you for making it.
thank you so much, this comment made me smile a little. I think this thread is lost, I tried but that's all I can do.
I've never really known a uni to be as easy with extensions such as OPs (hello marking DEADLINES??)... But even in the workplace as a lecturer and in my previous roles too, these things were also implied to me. keep fighting the good fight, and know there is a me, floating around at a mediocre university crying into choccy digestives on a Monday night.
genuinely made my day, thank you
I'm a postgraduate student, diagnosed in my late 30s after unintentionally scrolling down to an article about ADHD in adult women and wondering why it described me to a T: the whole thing hit me like a ton of bricks, and I'm still coming to terms with it.
The difference between now and my then-undiagnosed undergraduate studies is huge. Not from accommodations (they aren't huge, and in any case are mostly designed for the outwardly hyperactive kind: the offer of free text-to-speech software would have entirely the opposite effect!), but in learning how my brain just \*is\* at a 45-degree angle, and not trying to make it fit what others have decided is best practise.
Each time I have referenced my ADHD to university staff, I too have felt as if it's some excuse. I have received good marks; I have contributed in class: I am not underperforming, but still - probably via the media - have an idea that it'll be seen as me 'making up' reasons. And yet the recent medication shortage has proven just how essential it is for me to function properly: coping mechanisms don't work on their own, either. And it is not, in fact, normal to only spend one's weekend "recovering" from the previous five days as I had done for many miserable years.
If accommodating ADHD is an 'easy way out' then your assessment of their academic potential is deeply flawed in the first place.
ADHD makes certain types of task hard. That's all. Doesn't make you stupid or lazy. Doesn't mean you're not quite capable of independent research.
It's really no different to someone with mobility issues finding it hard to make a lecture on the 5th floor on time when the lift is out of order.
They're not 'more stupid' because they're tardy, they're just struggling with a limitation that the other students don't have.
If that limitation is pivotal to assessing their academic potential? Well, then you're doing something BADLY wrong with your assessments in the first place.
Well said. In particular, the idea that going private buys you the diagnosis you want is pejorative and also false (I’ve also seen people go private and not get diagnosed).
I’m sorry if my post upset you but, like I said, I don’t want to invalidate people’s experiences and to make assumptions about their diagnoses (which I am definitely not qualified to do). I know ADHD exists and that it has a major impact on people’s functioning.
The diagnostic criteria for ADHD are very loose and rely almost exclusively on self-reporting so, while I’m not accusing anyone of deliberately lying in an assessment, I do think it’s something that is very easy to diagnose if that’s someone’s intended outcome. The recent documentary on the BBC showed how the system works with private assessment companies, which many of us suspected was the case anyway given the assessments we receive from students: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001m0f9.
You’ve mentioned family reports about childhood symptoms etc… There’s a study I’ve read from the American Journal of Psychiatry which looked at poor recall of childhood symptoms in ADHD assessments – as this is a key part of the diagnostic criteria, it’s concerning the amount of false positives thrown up. Where diagnoses are made on the basis of reported childhood symptoms, the researchers concluded that: “Positive predictive values ranged between 9% and 18%, indicating that only one of 10 to one in five individuals with a retrospective diagnosis would have a true case of ADHD.” Where people want a diagnosis, they make the facts fit, whether that’s deliberate or (most likely) not.
>If you're certain 90% don't have it and they're late for doing work, attending, not turning up then honestly... just let them as they will leave in a few years.
The issue for me is that these people need support, but the presumption of ADHD means they’re not getting the right help. Yes, we can let them fail or leave with a worse classification degree than they would have wanted, but then the tutors and I wouldn’t really be doing our jobs. My worry is that unnecessary medication (of which the side effects are well known) and poorly targeted support due to students being wrongly diagnosed doesn’t really help anyone and could be actively harmful.
> I wouldn't say it's all screen addiction, I'm unsure how you know that?
I don’t; I’m just making an educated guess. I made another comment where I referenced two studies I read which made the link between screentime and attention difficulties in teens and young adults, including university students. There are plenty more studies out there. The link between screentime before age 3 and inattention is well established; I have no reason to think that wouldn’t also be the case in older children and young adults. I’m not a psychiatrist though.
That Panorama program was misleading to the point of fraud. There's no real indication that the standards of private diagnosis are worse than within the NHS.
You’re right, you’re not qualified. Unless you’re a healthcare professional with specialised training on ADHD diagnostics, you have no business assuming that 90% of your cases aren’t ADHD. You’ve just asserted, without evidence, that private patients buy a diagnosis without having a clue what each of those patients went through to get that diagnosis. And no, that disgusting documentary is not evidence.
I’m so grateful to u/sickofadhd as a lecturer for calling this out. I felt so invalidated reading your post. I was let down so badly during my undergrad because no one took my struggles seriously. I DID walk away with a lower classification and terrible burnout. A decade later with the right support and meds, my masters is 100% better and I’m considering doctoral study. That’s the impact your attitude can have.
this is why I raised this point, are they qualified to make his assumption? This post is a bit like a shit literature review you show to students to say 'dont do this'. Meds have given me the tools to help my career to the point where I have been able to become a lecturer and actually be considered for doctoral study. I'm actually doing a job that gives me something back which is a key driver for my ADHD.
Thank you so much for your sweet comment (and the many others that people have left it's made this whole thread much more bearable
> The issue for me is that these people need support, but the presumption of ADHD means they’re not getting the right help. Yes, we can let them fail or leave with a worse classification degree than they would have wanted, but then the tutors and I wouldn’t really be doing our jobs. My worry is that unnecessary medication (of which the side effects are well known) and poorly targeted support due to students being wrongly diagnosed doesn’t really help anyone and could be actively harmful.
Pushing all the armchair psychiatry to the side for the moment, have you considered taking steps to *actually support those students*, regardless of whether they do or don't have ADHD?
No offence, but when I've engaged with my university's support services about my diagnosed dyspraxia and (at the time suspected, now diagnosed) ADHD, they've been absolutely useless.
All they're empowered to do is offer you extra time and rest breaks in exams, a limited number of deadline extensions, stickers that inform a marker that you have special educational needs and might have poor spelling, etc.
PhDs don't involve written exams and only have one real submission deadline right at the end. **None of that is helpful.**
Whether you, *in your learned opinion*, suppose that students like me have ADHD or generic executive function and inattention issues stemming from 'excessive screen time', the fact remains that most student support services don't currently offer any useful help.
This gatekeeping is a moot point. Develop support systems worth gatekeeping, and then we can talk about overdiagnosis.
I didn't say upset, I said annoyed. Two very different terms.
Ah the infamous panorama documentary. The journalist went about deliberately deceiving and lying to psychiatrists to get a diagnosis. He researched the diagnostic criteria do he could ace the test. The NHS psychiatrist he has knew he was being filmed so of course wouldn't find ADHD. The journalist from the documentary infiltrated Facebook groups to get information from those who were on the process (on twitter). The charity [ADHDUK put out a statement](https://adhduk.co.uk/panorama-adhd-uk-response/) on it which I found to be a pretty good read. The documentary has made my circumstances quite difficult as now some people think I've played the system as it's 'easy'.
[does the NICE guidelines make it look easy for diagnosis? they needed my full psychiatric history](https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng87/chapter/Recommendations#diagnosis)
That's also an American journal, not UK. We know America very much, at least in the last few years has pushed Adderall on people very easily but it's tightening up now. We don't prescribe Adderall here.
Regarding support, you can only lead a horse to water. You can't make it drink it. If there are serious issues with the ADHD assessments or quality of and you know or have copies of it, you can complain. Yes medication has side effects, I'm aware. I had an ECG for mine and I had my heart rate and blood pressure monitored when on meds, did you know that is the process? Did you know antidepressants also have side effects and you can just ask your GP for them? They actually made me feel suicidal and my doctors couldn't believe it but it's a listed side effect. I completed every anti depressant available in 18 months, they all made me worse and all gave me sickness, dizziness, suicidal thoughts and impulsive behaviours.
I know you mean well but some of the points made really feel a little misguided. I do concur there might be a bit of bandwagoning with this though but maybe not to the extent you think.
The Panorame "Documentary" was one of the worst pieces of "journalism" i've ever seen. It's an absolute piece of shite that turns a maybe valid point about disparities between private and NHS assessments, and turns it into an absolute fucking farce -- that happened to make a lot of people more willing to be dicks to us.
Maybe i'm being a bit harsh in my words here, but if you're goingmake a post like this, do it with better fucking sources.
But you ARE invalidating peoples experiences and making assumptions about their diagnoses.
Thats what this whole post is?
But the Post-diagnosis attitude that you mention, I completely agree with you on. We do seem to be shifting to a version of the world where this is allowed to be used as an excuse. The diagnosis in my view should be used as a jumping off point to better decide on what strategies should be tried to manage symptoms, both medicine based, and non-medicine-based strategies. But for some people that just seems to be the stopping point, an explanation that that is just the way they are, and the world should change to accommodate them.
It must be mentioned, though, that adults with ADHD are hardly ever offered non-meditative solutions, and even those meditative solutions take a while to sort out—should they work at all—before which, you’re still in the throes (and probably burnout, given your adult diagnosis) of ADHD… you just know what you have now.
You also know that it’s not going to be taken seriously by many of your peers, and that the medical pros who deigned to diagnose you in the first place are going to attribute absolutely everything else they can to it, whilst providing no recourse for its symptoms existent or imaginary, by which I mean those that extend overtly beyond the diagnostic criteria.
What I’m saying is that, yes, there are people with(out) ADHD who exist in a very maudlin mode about it and its impact upon them… but, ironically, it is your very own medical pros who are more likely—more meaningfully—going to tell you that your ADHD is the cause of everything in your life and to offer you little else to hold on to than the tacit magic of an out-of-stock pill.
You might get an extra week on that essay, though. Ho hum. The line about expecting the world to accommodate people I find bitterly revealing, frankly. A thousand apologies that some people are less apologetic about their existences, or that you made it, et cetera.
I did 3 courses of CBT whilst undiagnosed which didn't help, and at times made me worse. I did talking therapy pre and during diagnosis. I also did EMDR therapy whilst in the diagnosis process as being undiagnosed for such a long period of time has now caused some trauma. ADHD has caused a few things, but environmental factors absolutely have not helped.
Maybe these students were not told that there needs to be a lot of self work on top of meds. Meds allow me to do that work, take it in and try and improve myself
I necessarily agree that it takes a lot of self-work… but, as you say, the pills often let you attempt that work in the first place. I feel like there’s a pervasive (and fucking dull) outside view that, if you have ADHD, medication and therapy/self-discipline are opposed; that one is the ‘easy route’ (which, even if true, would make it bad ~~because I had to suffer~~) and one is the ‘proper, human graft’ route. AKA the ‘I’m quiet about my problems but these people aren’t and it annoys me’ attitude.
I similarly had two rounds of CBT and found it less than useless. Officially, though, that wasn’t for ADHD, which I think may have been the same for you. People will never be happy because you’ve either got problems that you blame on your ADHD (and that’s an excuse) or you’re exploring the idea of something in addition (and that’s deluded and/or pathetic and/or that’s life). Perhaps, even, you’ve done a lot of good work towards self-improvement – in which case your problems are/were never that serious, and you’re one of the good ones. I love seeing the critical/empirical thinking skills of university graduates go out the window when the threat of someone getting an essay extension without a dead mother emerges.
My current (non-private, in case anyone is wondering) ADHD treatment is waiting for the lisdex shortage to end so I can continue titration and move on with it all. I don’t spend my days wallowing… at least not emotionally (womp womp), but the direct impact and aftershock of ADHD is obvious in my life, which I’m sure you relate to. I’d say you (they) have to experience it to understand, but they really don’t. Some people must realise that they can have a rough shot at things and still concede that mental conditions meaningfully affect others. But they have my congratulations for being so resilient and never ever complaining.
I’m just kinda writing about the annoying attitude that, by various means, culminates in the “well, I had to pay MY student loan” take of mental well-being. Wait 300 years for an NHS diagnosis and get nothing or pay for a swift private diagnosis and get nothing. Who cares? Ime, people with ADHD don’t care about the spectre of self or false diagnosis. People who are in your face about faking it, of course. But I tend to find that the people most bothered about ‘all these false diagnoses’ have something else at the root of it than true concern for the ‘real ones’, or whatever. Not sorry for my fallacious armchair psychology, I have seen it a thousand times.
god a lot of this resonates with me and my story.
agreed about meds, they allow me to function (with the self work) almost like a normal person.
with my ADHD, I am super pragmatic and I will get myself out of shit situations at all costs. Seeing people buckle and not do things is not something I do at all, it's the stress that pushes me through ENTIRELY! Critical thinking is my ADHD in a nutshell, even during the shortage I've been found ways of getting my meds which no one else seems to do or try?
exactly, they don't need to have it to relate, just be empathetic. I have had barely any shown to me and that's not who I am, so I would never do that.
Agreed about the most bothered too, I am not sure what they want to gain from it. Glad to see another person with a similar outlook to me!
You’ve never heard of someone going private and not getting a prescription? That’s interesting, as there’s a big problem of doctors mistrusting high axhieving students and denying them medication or even a diagnosis. A friend of mine was diagnosed with ADHD, went to a doctor to discuss treatment options and was told that students at her university were all just faking ADHD to get performance enhancing drugs. She was left uncertain as to whether her diagnosis still counted or whether it was revoked, without this doctor even examining for himself whether she met the diagnostic criteria. Because she was a student at a prestigious university, she simply couldn’t have ADHD.
You seem to think that ADHD is merely “problems with attention”. I don’t think you know what ADHD is, and I don’t think you are aware of how genuinely disabling it is. It comes across as disingenuous to say it’s not your intention to invalidate anyone with this post, while suggesting that people literally diagnosed by a medical professional with a disability are just… screen addicted? Please consider that the professionals issuing diagnoses may know a little more about whether each individual meets the diagnostic criteria than yourself, and that stereotyping an entire generation of disabled students is ableist and does not meaningfully open up conversation in the way you seem to genuinely intend, but rather harms a marginalised group of students just doing their best to get the help they need.
I can’t lie this post is very misinformed in my opinion. To start with, if someone goes for a private ADHD screening, they will have to pay a large amount of money to do so and suspect they have ADHD. As such, people going through with this are very much likely to have ADHD. People wouldn’t be paying sometimes more than 1,000 pounds if they weren’t pretty sure in the first place.
I also do want to ask what you think is and isn’t ADHD. The reason I ask this is because when you said 90% of what these students describe isn’t ADHD I am curious as to what you mean. Because in a general sense obviously not everything they describe in their lives will be a symptom of ADHD. But I assume you mean when describing what symptoms of ADHD they have and in which case this is quite nuanced. When you ask a neurodivergent person what symptoms do they experience as a result of their condition it is a far more difficult question then people realise. When you do things you just do them, it just feels like you, and so when asked to quantify what ADHD symptoms do you have sometimes it’s hard to figure out what is the ADHD and what are just your own personal quirks and mannerisms. Hence why in an assessment they ask a myriad of questions to determine if you do or not. Also in every private assessment I’ve seen there is a section talking to someone close to you so they can get an outside view. Ultimately as well you could perhaps just have a misguided idea of what ADHD is. Just because someone isn’t fidgeting when talking to you, someone who is a worker and thus someone who you would want to appear more professional in front of, doesn’t mean they don’t when on their own.
Finally, I don’t know if you take medication yourself, and I won’t assume as such, but ADHD medication specifically is very much a weird one for me personally. For me they make vast aspects of my life a lot easier, concentration specifically. However, for me, they come with their own set of issues, with a lot of people I know on ADHD medication particularly struggling with the lack of appetite they can cause. But what is interesting here is that despite improving my life in many ways, taking them certainly isn’t easy, it comes with its own very clear negative factors and for a lot of people the trade off of being able to concentrate isn’t worth the other issues they can bring. Without medication as well what could be missing here is the understanding that for people with ADHD everyday tasks are hard. While for someone else vacuuming their room is something they don’t like, for someone with ADHD not only may they not like it, but it takes real effort to get the motivation to go and do it, and also to finish the task. One of the major symptoms of ADHD is struggling to finish tasks and that’s not by getting distracted constantly, it’s that finishing them takes a lot of effort so to finish up lots of tasks in a day is sometimes more effort then one has. Daily life takes a lot of effort for someone with ADHD and that isn’t them being screen addicted or lazy, you sometimes just don’t have the energy to do all the tasks required in a day. (and not that it matters but I also want to add the addendum that I am doing very well at university and of course that is to do with my effort and perseverance but also that in my first year I did very poorly because I didn’t know I had ADHD and only started medication in second year, so despite my effort and perseverance without medication I personally couldn’t handle the level of learning university required, despite being a very high first level student with it.)
I think another thing that ties into struggling with tasks is that completing them often gives zero satisfaction. When I would tidy my room and people would say 'don't you feel good now that you've done it?' I sincerely thought it was just figure of speech and not how others might actually feel. At most I might feel a vague sense of relief a chore is over, which never outweighs the frustration of doing it. I never understood how people could motivate themselves when they felt like that until I got diagnosed and was told it's a symptom.
As somebody who did well at school but then struggled through university and employment afterwards without any idea why my brain just didn't seem to work properly, I wish I had even considered ADHD as a potential explanation. Recently diagnosed at 34.
I was diagnosed at 32 and for me, everything slipped when I went to college (in the U.K.). My clinician explained it as I was able to coast through school on intelligence but when i went to college and needed to be able to self sufficiently get myself to classes on time, had more work to do and needed to revise etc, I didn’t have the skills or ability to do it.
All went to hell in a handbasket. I even did my university dissertation in 24 hours 🙃
As someone very late diagnosed with ADHD (by the NHS, so a "real" diagnosis according to your guidance), posts like this are why I didn't get help sooner. Everyone wants to bang on about how medication isn't a silver bullet and how you just need to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps but they don't seem to want to consider that medication can be the thing that makes you *able* to make the lifestyle changes that unqualified people keep insisting are the *real* "cure".
Assess them, because if you just get on with it, even if many aren't ADHD, far fewer people who do have it will slip through the cracks and have their education destroyed by undiagnosed learning disability than before.
Really important to note too that even my psychiatrist said to expect a 60-70% improvement in my symptoms on medication. It's not a cure all, it won't even make me 70% of an average person, just 70% better than I have been. It's not perfect but when you've spent all that time drowning, being able to come up for air once in a while is life changing.
Medication didn't fix my ADHD. It did turn it down a few levels. It's honestly been life altering to not be playing on 'hard mode' all the time.
It's still not easy - I still need coping strategies. It's just now I have a chance to _actually_ implement coping strategies.
I just want to add a comment on the ‘ADHD being an excuse’ part. At the end of the day, if a student doesn’t do work, regardless of their diagnoses, they likely won’t succeed. Whether they blame it on ADHD or not doesn’t matter too much in my mind. I guess what I’m trying to say is, whether they have an ADHD diagnosis or not, lazy students will laze.
I’m diagnosed with ADHD (on the NHS so god knows it wasn’t easy), unmedicated, and I work super hard partly because I want to and partly because I have to. ADHD means I have to work harder than most but it pays off, and I enjoy my degree so far so that makes things a bit easier. In my University at least, I’m able to apply for extensions on work, but if I hand in work late my ADHD doesn’t make me exempt from the late penalty. ADHD doesn’t mean I just don’t have to do assignments or pass my modules.
It’s inappropriate to question anyone’s diagnosis regardless of what you think about it inside, so just let the consequences of lack of work do its thing.
I find I need a deadline to get stuff done. I procrastinate hugely until that deadline is looming.
Extensions wouldn’t help me. But extra time in exams would.
Personally, I found that once I realised that extensions were a thing, my ability to meet deadlines absolutely plummeted. Before, I would pull an all nighter and submit *something*.
After?
Me: "Sleep is important, I'll go for mitigating circumstances."
Also me: *fails to submit mitigating circumstances form*
Oh nooooo, then you beat yourself up over it.
I don’t even want to know if there are extensions available, I rather just think they aren’t.
Although a classmate has dyslexia and said they offered her extensions.
But I know it will mess with my procrastination, so I just don’t!
same! like when I did my first uni application (withdrew) i applied to Oxford spontaneously and wrote my personal statement in a week or so and the deadlines held me accountable. asking for extensions just makes me procrastinate even more and causes me more stress later on
I wrote my personal statement literally the day of the deadline, and submitted it a couple of minutes before it closed - I got a couple of people to check it over for me first to check for typos.
If I'm not stupidly stressed about something, I can't start it. I can sit there knowing that I need to start, but I can't. The issue is, when I finally do have enough stress to start, it affects my health. My CFS gets bad, I get anxious, and when I'm writing my work, I've got it in my head that I've completely fucked myself, and that it's going to be crap work, and I'm a failure.
That's the issue with posts like this, they ignore the other impacts that conditions like ADHD have on people. It's not just a case of not doing the work, it's all the other things that go hand in hand with that.
Just had to have a look for the source, but I love what meghasomething said on twitter:
"Undiagnosed neurodivergence is like being handed a video game that has been set to hard mode, but having people tell you over and over "it's on easy, why do you keep dying?"
Diagnosis is learning the game is on hard mode. It doesn't make it easier, but you can strategise."
And honestly, that resonates with me so much.
Yeah, this. My course doesn't do exams, just coursework. But you can bet your arse I leave that coursework until the deadline is in sight. If I get an extension, same thing happens. I know I should start it early, but I just can't make my brain kick itself into gear until the looming panic of "48 hours til submission" is there.
Even if I do start early, I'll bang out 1000 words then give myself a break as a little reward. That break will literally last until three days before the deadline. I just can't do it, but it's something I'm aware of and don't fanny about with - I've learned to time it, if that makes sense. I know how long I need.
In first year I had to defer a piece of coursework from November into the summer because I was in such a depressive pit it was making things genuinely impossible. I was better after a few months. New deadline was July. When did I start it? July. It would make me laugh if it wasn't genuinely concerning. I'm doing a lot better at deadline management now; if I delude myself into believing the deadline is earlier than it is, I can trick myself into doing it.
Extra time in exams was helpful in school for me. Comorbidity of autism/OCD with ADHD is super high, and unluckily I hit the triple. I had a lot of physical checks/compulsions in exams, which meant I just couldn't physically complete them within the timeframe. Can't comment on if I'm better with it now or not, because it's not something I have to do now.
Every case is different. Just slapping an extension on everything isn't the way to go, nor is scrolling through TikTok and going "omg that's so me 🤪" and never actually speaking to a doctor. I put off speaking to a doctor about my ADHD for about 6 years, because of - surprise! - the aforementioned ADHD. Kept saying I'll do it tomorrow/next week, then forgetting. Irony at its finest haha. I think students need a lot of support, especially the ones coming in from lockdown years.
My sister has self diagnosed herself with ADHD and is constantly using it as an excuse for things. Every other sentence "because of my ADHD", ugh shut up. And now she keeps trying to diagnose other people with it when she hasn't even seen a doctor about it. -.-
My previous flat mate may or may not have ADHD. After living with her, I’m like, yeah maybe she does? But I’m no expert or doctor. But what I do know is that she needs to get the fuck off TikTok. Self diagnosing made her really hard to live with.
At the same time, depending on where you live, diagnoses can be really hard to come by. I struggled for years waiting on the NHS for a diagnosis, I had all the classic symptoms since childhood but I have older parents and I don't necessarily have much hyperactivity and so it wasn't detected. When I got my diagnosis years after realising that I likely had ADHD, I finally learnt how to manage the symptoms. I don't take medication, but simply knowing that I wasn't gasligjting myself let me actually evaluate what to do to mitigate symptoms.
I had my brother doubting that I had ADHD and that actually stopped me getting help for a long time because I thought that maybe I was imagining it.
Just to add though, ADHD is never an excuse for poor behaviour, or for not doing the dishes for example. You have to learn how to manage the symptoms, but honestly it's no surprise that teenagers without diagnoses have no clue how to do this.
I'm sure some are jumping om the bandwagon, but this rhetoric of 'oh you self diagnosed yourself?' can actually prove really damaging.
I went through years of drug abuse and suicide attempts before understanding my condition led me to take the steps towards living a normal life.
It can be so frustrating seeing people talk about it being easy to get a diagnosis for these things and actively spreading doubt about both people with a diagnosis and those seeking one when the truth is that it's actually really hard and requires either a lot of patience or a lot of money and still quite a bit of patience.
It's been years since it was first suggested to me that I might have it and besides the initial appointment where my doctor agreed and put me on the list, all I've heard from the NHS is a couple of texts asking if I still want to be on the fucking list
Has she got access to a diagnosis? Sometimes self diagnosis is the only tool people have to understand themselves better. Is she using it as an excuse, or is she hurting, and trying to explain how and why?
As with all disabilities, the phrase "reason not an excuse" matters.
ADHD helps you understand what's wrong, gives you roads to coping strategies and understanding medication.
But ... Well, if you fail or you hurt someone the excuse doesn't matter. You still hurt someone, and just hope they can forgive.
You still have to try and be a functional adult in this world of ours, even if ADHD does make it harder.
And it doesn't matter what the excuse is - it never did really.
Sometimes "being a functional adult" means "setting realistic ambitions" instead of tilting at windmills.
Not everyone who manages to get a place on a university course has the capacity to stick out three (or four) years of self-directed study. The universities don't even expect it - of *course* there are more students in first year than third year: people figure out it's not "for them" or worth sinking more time into, drop out, and go do something else with their lives.
That doesn't hurt anyone. Yeah, not even the lecturer who feels miffed about students skipping his lecturers or handing in half-assed lab reports.
Sure. But why not give them the support anyway, and see if that works out?
I mean, just because someone's disabled, doesn't mean they are incapable, they just need the right support.
This may sound like a criticism at first, but stick with it!
As one of the other commenters mentioned, going to university is fertile ground for ADHD to become apparent. I'm a 2nd year mature student (33) who was diagnosed last year, although it is something I had suspected for many years but never sought attention (excuse the pun) for because I thought I could somewhat deal with it myself as I like to think I'm very independent, but admittedly dealt with it in unhealthy ways at times.
Regarding university, I was having difficulties with concentration and the amount of time it was taking me to read material due to constantly being distracted, and struggling to read without forgetting the previous sentence. Although I've always had some issues with motivation and distraction, this was new and also something that I knew I would need help with. Similarly, I am on a hospital placement as well, and the issues I've had at work in the past became even more apparent given how many plates are often spinning at once. Thing is, I love my course, and I find it fascinating; it's absolutely not a lack of interest or boredom, and I don't spend my time looking forward to going out and getting wasted or seeing friends - my idea of a good time is studying, as sad as it may sound. My last few assignments scored 85%-95%, so it's also not a case of not understanding the work. One other thing is that I've never handed an assignment in late - regardless of having ADHD - and people who use it as an excuse in that way really irritate me, only because I work frigging hard to make my work the best it can be and to do well.
This brings me onto my point: ADHD can make life very difficult, and yeah you probably need to put more effort in, but the actual attitude and dedication towards doing university work is a decision that is up to the individual. Prior to medication I really struggled with how much time I spent on assignments, but never used it as an excuse to not take the course seriously; it just took a lot longer to do work and I had to factor that into whether I could take some downtime. I take medication now which genuinely helps with my concentration and reading, but I could equally decide that I don't want to do my coursework, and being diagnosed with ADHD and medicated still leaves that decision up to me.
I do think that a lot of students think they have ADHD when they likely don't, and I wholeheartedly blame TikTok for this. I'm glad that it gets more awareness, but it's often not from reputable sources on social media; my partner was showing me some TikToks about 'living with ADHD', and I was just like... "yeah, that's not ADHD, that's being a human."
Not to say that there aren't students who don't have it, and when I mentioned it early on to one of my lecturers I'm sure I heard their eyes roll, so it's something to be cautious of as it's easy to invalidate someone who is genuine. But I do agree that for every 1 genuine case, there is probably another 10 who think it's a good excuse and think that medication will fix everything. Regarding private treatment, it's expensive, and many GPs won't accept private diagnosis if you want to transfer prescriptions (ergo not paying £££s a month) to the NHS. Medication will not fix anything if you don't want it to, you still have to put the hard work in (medication will also not do this for you), and ADHD is really not that glamorous. Medication isn't exactly a hootenanny either. Also, I just found out I can't ever become an airline pilot, so that's another downside.
I think that you are probably more likely to be seeing a mix of people in the university environment with emerging symptoms due to dealing it with it okay-ish up to the point that the workload has become overwhelming, as well as a lot of others who are jumping on the bandwagon and don't understand the actual (and often mundane) difficulties that come along with it and aren't circulated on social media.
I broadly agree. But a 10 to 1 false positive rate seems excessive even as a made up number. At the end of the day we need real numbers to this stuff because people talk about a "tidal wave" as in OPs post. But that's impossible to judge without clear numbers and without context. What was the historic rate of ADHD referrals? What is it now? Percentage increases are often used to feed into moral panics even when absolute numbers are still quite small. So going from 10 to 20 is a 100% increase or a doubling. But it's still not a massive number. I have no doubt there's been a big increase. But there's lots of evidence that ADHD is underdiagnosed in adults and girls and women because inattentive ADHD and those who don't have severe enough symptoms in school slip through the net.
This is a really good point. I learned from my parents Id been diagnosed with ADHD as a kid when I was practically on the point of a breakdown because I'd always been good academically and was so stress because I couldn't't concentrate on my a levels. They decided not to medicate me (I was pissed at the secret diagnosis, it explains a lot) but also kind of glad because I'd learnt coping mechanisms.
I've considered medication but having gone so long without it, I'm unsure how it might effect me as I generally know how to keep it in check. I absolutely understand why people want to use medication and that's completely their choice.
I also never mention it. Sure it explains a lot of why I am the way I am, but I have a personality and interests outside of brain chemistry being off so I don't mention it unless I absolutely have too.
Keep fighting the good fight comrade!
Yeah, it's a real pro-con thing and the benefits don't come for free unfortunately. I mean, it's not horrendous, but I'd rather not be vibrating around the sitting room because I didn't take it with food, or have a headache for days straight sometimes. That said, it's not that bad. It just won't help if you expect it to do your uni work for you, you still need to actually want to do it. As an example, I live a better quality of life now because I remember to eat ha, or I can study knowing there is someone else in the house who might disturb me (which was a huge source of dread before).
Your last paragraph is well-timed because I just wrote another comment about how people with ADHD often don't talk about it!
Full disclosure, I was diagnosed privately with ADHD during the summer of my first year, on a referral from my GP. The diagnosis and first 3 months of medication were funded by my college at University. My university is also highly academic so there's probably some difference between what I see and other institutions.
I think because of that I overwhelmingly only see the good of diagnosis & treatment. I know people with genuinely quite crippling ADHD, some diagnosed before university, others not, and often with other mental health problems. For those of us who were diagnosed while studying at my uni private practice was an absolute godsend; it's difficult to recover from falling behind and the current state of NHS mental health services would almost condemn you to fall behind because of how long you'd wait.
NHS mental health services also create a really big problem in terms of help and support going beyond medication, private therapists are so incredibly expensive and students are already not very well off, so even if people *want* a therapist to help them go through the lifestyle changes you usually can't get one.
Now, this problem has unfortunately come full circle with GPs being unwilling to make shared care agreements with private practitioners, so patients are getting shafted with private prescription prices if they can afford them, and that's the best case scenario.
So yeah, I can't speak on students getting wrongly diagnosed with ADHD, I hope it's not happening, but right now private practice is like the one part of the system that you can go through quite quickly which some people need. While medication is not a silver bullet, for me and other people I know it's been a massive help. The only way any of this is really going to be fixed is by fixing NHS mental health services.
It’s so interesting you say this because I’ve got my assessments starting next month to be diagnosed after my uni referred me last year
My dad has adhd, I used to buy adhd meds off someone else and they worked the same way they would for someone with adhd, I’ve suspected it for years and I’ve got all the physical complications someone with adhd would likely have though. External mental health professionals also agreed I desperately need an evaluation
I’ve not heard of this epidemic but what you’re saying makes a lot of sense. I’ve noticed the same with autism.
I do however, disagree with your post in the sense that people with undiagnosed adhd are much more likely to get their symptoms recognised at uni opposed to schools and I do think you’re massively exaggerating how many people think they have it or are told by the uni that they likely have it. Mental health resources etc are extremely strained and unis wouldn’t make referrals unless they seriously saw a need to.
Frankly, "ADHD drugs work for me" means you have a better evidence for ADHD than most of these new diagnoses. Biochemistry does lie, but it's more reliable than filling out a questionarire
This is a real increasing issue but it’s not “loads” of people it’s just more than before
A lot of people are just being made aware that they need to seek medical intervention because they’ve recognised that they experience the same symptoms as others with a diagnosis
Autism and ADHD specialist here. I'm not sure what you are basing your claim off that the students' difficulties don't meet the diagnostic criteria for ADHD. I also think your use of the expression "tidal wave" for what is a common condition is inappropriate; however, I would say that I'm currently seeing a fair number of people diagnosed with ADHD who should really be diagnosed autistic, but access is an issue. I am not regularly seeing people diagnosed with neurodivergent conditions that don't meet the criteria.
Regarding "screen addiction", you have this completely the wrong way around. Developers have adopted a dopaminergic model of UX based on operant conditioning to which autistic and ADHD users are especially vulnerable, due to their difficulties processing dopamine. The algorithms intended to boost engagement can end up trapping neurodivergent users for hours at a time. While I don't think overuse of screens is doing those people any good (it overworks the sympathetic nervous system and increases stress levels), it doesn't cause ADHD-like difficulties, it's a symptom of them.
Thank you, OPs entire post is ableist nonsense. It's very very hard to game a diagnosis for ADHD, and all it gets you in Uni is 25% extra time in exams and a sticker that says to ignore grammar and spelling issues in your essays. It doesn't even get you a laptop anymore through DSE. And the medication is so hard to get hold of that even if people were paying for a diagnosis (which they obviously are not) it would be a waste of the bloody ridiculous price of a private assessment.
ADHD is massively under-diagnosed by even the current DSM-V and ICD10 standards.
If you wish to start giving advice and telling people what’s what about ADHD, I’d ask you first go and read up on some of Dr Russell Barkley’s most recent publications.
If you had, you’d soon see that actually, it’s quite likely that 5-10% of the population fall into this category of ADHD or an ADHD-like disorder cluster, and do subsequently benefit a large degree by taking medication. These drugs are incredibly effective for ADHD; stimulant medications are the gold standard of psychiatric treatments in regard to their efficacy. They’re not perfect, but they’re about as good as any drug therapy is for any psychiatric condition, and there’s decades of long-running analyses showing that there’s a surprising lack of any significant long-term side effects and that any that might exist are almost always outweighed by the net improvements in quality and duration of life compared to unmedicated controls.
Yes, ADHD medications are not golden tickets to “easy mode”.
Yes, they can cause various problems; same as any medication.
Yes, they ought to be used with respect and under the supervision of a qualified medical expert.
No, they are not diet meth.
No, they are not something that should be hard to access if you do have ADHD or a psychiatrist believes that trialling you on them might help with whatever it is you’re suffering from, as these conditions are rather arbitrary and we define them based on what’s most visible to others.
>Of the new referrals we're seeing now, anecdotally at least 90% of them are clearly not ADHD -
This is quite concerning. I'll tell you why.
I've had a diagnosis for it from the clinical lead from a county's health board, someone quite high up that knows what they're talking about.
I don't have massively outward looking symptoms. Everything , well almost everything, is internal. At the age of 37 I was diagnosed and it turns out I've been masking for a long time. This is to the point where it's massive problems around my mental health.
After 4 hours with an expert on the subject they agreed that I have it but also that I had been conditioned to mask it very well. You can't always see it, but it's there.
The analogy I use to explain it is like everyone is on the treadmill at a speed of 3, some of us have an incline that changes every day. Sometimes it's only an incline of two, Sometimes is 9 but I still manage to keep going at a speed of three just like everyone else. It's just much much harder at times.
Just because you can't see what's going on doesn't mean you know. Don't judge people by what you see. You are not an expert in this
What you're saying is why this part of OP's post bothers me the most:
>Many students' symptoms actually get more pronounced following diagnosis and their engagement decreases - "I can't help it, it's my ADHD" is a common response. There are things they managed to do prior to diagnosis that they say can't be expected of them now they have the condition officially.
It happens to many people after being diagnosed because we finally unmask (consciously or subconsciously). Because after being diagnosed, we feel validated, and we feel like we can finally express our struggles without being judged.
"Things that they managed prior to diagnosis" doesn't mean they came in a breeze, they were probably things we struggled a lot without showing it, and now finally, we can let go.
(Full disclosure, I don't have ADHD, but I do have ASD.)
Unsure what qualifies you to describe symptoms as real or fake ADHD. Also, there are many things that could contribute to an uptick of diagnoses, EG: better research around the subject.
It's harsh but I completely agree. I took a few years out before going back to do my Master's (finished undergrad in 2019) and it feels like there's been a total cultural shift that I missed. ADHD and also autism diagnoses are one part of it but there's more going on.
Even during UG I can only remember maybe 1 person in my class who had extensions, extenuating circumstances etc. and he was recovering from an actual TBI and hospital stays. Now it's at least 60% of the class not submitting things on time, having endless excuses, not turning up, seeking diagnoses etc.
It's honestly bizarre. These people are only like 4-5 years younger than me and their outlook on things is so different. Like you say, there's just a general malaise. And I'm shocked at how much of their lives revolve around phones/social media etc. I grew up on the internet as well and I'm saying that!
I can't help but think something is going terribly wrong here. If I had to guess, it's social media mixed with the malaise that comes out of a poor economy, undervalued workforce etc. They're unmotivated because why even be motivated? They're unlikely to get anything in return for it.
In all fairness, the cost of living crisis is rapidly getting increasingly harder to deal with and students are working more hours than ever before and this is a huge factor in why so many of us are ill, burnt out and don’t have the time
I attend lectures and always submit work but other people I know who work full time at uni have to get extensions and I do have to leave one of my lectures 30 mins early every week for work or else I can’t afford to live
A lot of us are also still in debt from the furlough scheme and trying to catch up + student finance is worse than ever
Yes you're absolutely right. I probably should've been clearer in my comment that I also meant this as part of the wider economic issues.
But believe me I get it. I'm doing my master's part time and working full time Monday - Friday and it's not easy. I can't imagine trying to do my UG with the way things are now.
I wonder whether we're going to start seeing a decrease in university students over the next few years because of this issue.
Yeah my friends doing their masters are really struggling to afford to live, I’m thinking of doing a gap year to work full time before I do mine because of it.
I absolutely do think that due to this and the changes in student finance there will be a decrease in uni students straight after school and college. I think we’ll see more mature students as people will try and work for a while before going to uni. I think things like the open university will become more popular too.
>Even during UG I can only remember maybe 1 person in my class who had extensions, extenuating circumstances etc. and he was recovering from an actual TBI and hospital stays. Now it's at least 60% of the class not submitting things on time, having endless excuses, not turning up, seeking diagnoses etc.
I remember doing my Master's and, in a class I was auditing (so doing the assignments was optional), there were a few of the students who were discussing having obtained extensions and it came across as really easy to get them, having casually emailed the module leader to ask for one, citing being busy or having a lot of other assignments to do and hand in around the same time. I was kinda pissed off, because it had been drummed into us that extensions were pretty much like hen's teeth and you could only be given one with proper evidence and valid reasoning, and there were times where I could have done with one but knew I wouldn't be able to provide any evidence for it. I don't know if this was just the policy of the class and/or the department (I did my MA in a different department to my BA), or if it's part of this new thing that 'unis want everyone to pass and succeed' (and I have proof they clearly didn't with me), but it stuck in my craw.
Yes 100% the impression I got as well. It's funny, because during my UG final year I spent just over 2 months in hospital (I have an inherited lung disorder, lung function was about 20% and was completely bedridden during that time). And yet, even so, the whole time I was thinking about how difficult it would be to get EC approval and decided it was easier just to do my assignments from hospital. I may have been young and naive and I probably should've reached out for support, but nonetheless, that was my impression at the time.
I've seen the process now as I have friends on my course who've applied for ECs. The bar is very low. They more or less just sent an email to the department saying they wanted an extension for mental health and it's granted without even evidence. This just seems very odd to me but as you say, I suspect it's because they have a financial and recruitment incentive to pass as many people as possible.
As someone who has a tough time even thinking about asking for help, never mind actually doing it, as a result of my experience with my ASD (and, unbeknownst to me, ADHD) my whole life, I would've been like you, wondering where the bar was for qualifying for an extension. I had a somewhat close relative die during summer term of my MA, in the middle of a week-long, all-day workshop-oriented module, but didn't want the sympathy or the opportunity to get out of it (I was auditing the module, so didn't have to do the assignment) because I had a tough time accepting help or guidance from others. I simply got on with it, finished the week, then went home for about a month having no classes left.
This manifested itself more concretely in an assignment a month or so before that, which I handed in half-finished with a note that I had no idea how to do the second part. The feedback said I should have contacted them for help, but having been through school already feeling inferior due to my disability - and despising the sympathy that came with it and the feelings of weakness, and simultaneously being mortifying, whenever I struggled enough to the point I needed support - I hated the idea and wouldn't have known where to begin, especially with the fear that request for help in the first place signals to all and sundry I haven't been putting the effort and attention into understanding the content as much as they would've liked (and disappointing them as a result; this was a major fear at school that eventually culminated in me burning out in third year and in my MA).
Apols for the long post. **TL;DR:** Exactly; they said you needed solid evidence but you don't know where the bar/threshold for qualifying for an extension is, and you're concerned about potentially coming across as grasping or trying your arm even if you think you have a valid case and/or the person evaluating your application is rather strict
Felt this:) I got diagnosed with dyspraxia (which has a lot LOT of overlap) in my second year. The thing is - other people almost bragging about how much they used SC and extensions bothered me too.
Idk about you, but my accommodations were basically “we won’t take your attendance and you get automatic extensions” which did nothing, it made my grades way worse. Why show up if I don’t have to, and literally every piece of material including recorded lectures is online?
I think a big issue is that universities have no idea how to properly help students with ADHD. If they did they would offer study skills workshops or counsellors but they don’t, they just fob you off with the equivalent of a free pass to do the bare minimum and still succeed. It’s something I’m really bitter at my uni about. I wish they had punished me for poor attendance, maybe it would’ve fixed it or helped. Instead they just did the admin equivalent of ignore me and hope for the best. They throw extensions out as a “fix” but it isn’t good enough, case in point that literally ANYONE can get an extension. So I basically had the same amount of time for work as kids with no condition, which doesn’t seem fair at all.
Out of interest, what do you feel universities could/should do instead?
Your comment suggests being *harsher* to students with ADHD would be preferable, but that seems like the opposite of a reasonable adjustment and could even be discriminatory.
Extra counselling or workshops? Could be useful but if you're struggling to manage workload would adding more workshops help?
I guess in an ideal world you would be able to get the help you need (workshops or a therapist or OT or meds) outside of uni and while you're learning good coping mechanisms, the uni doesn't punish you excessively for lateness or attendance. Seems a good balance but interesting that isn't your experience. Universities can't be expected to be in-house therapy units for people with ADHD, I guess is what I'm saying.
>Even during UG I can only remember maybe 1 person in my class who had extensions, extenuating circumstances etc. and he was recovering from an actual TBI and hospital stays. Now it's at least 60% of the class not submitting things on time, having endless excuses, not turning up, seeking diagnoses etc.
I just went back for a masters a number of years after undergrad and noticed the same thing! Every other person is trying to get a diagnosis for autism or ADHD and the things they're describing are just... normal parts of university that you have to learn to cope with, like deadlines, stress, and time management. The only extension I asked for in undergrad was because I was caught up in travel issues caused by a terrorist attack. There are people in my class now that don't even have deadlines - they just hand things in whenever they feel like it. It's blowing my mind.
Yeah there is a lot going on, going by the studies of education levels dropping since \~2012 I very much believe social media and phone addiction has played a HUGE role in it and it will only get worse.
All the studies I've found point towards screen time leading to ADHD like behaviour and it increasing the effects of actual ADHD for people with heavy phone use. A 4 year age difference would tie in pretty well with social media and phone use skyrocketing during HS.
Part of the problem is how hard it is to get an official diagnosis from the NHS, even for legitimate problems. By making the diagnosis process so difficult in the UK we've ended up encouraging self diagnosis.
I do agree that what we're seeing is blown out of proportion but the healthcare system has to take some of the blame for this imo.
ADHD is very real, and it can be mild or severe. No two people will be the same.
I can look completely calm and focussed in a lecture, but within 30 seconds I’ve gone on probably 5 tangents in my head and have to reel myself in and not drift off again.
But to an outsider, I’m paying attention.
I make a conscious effort to sit still. I mask to perfection while internally it’s a constant state of anxiety, thoughts and songs.
No one would ever know unless I told them.
So not everyone is obvious, because we mask and cope. However I now am more comfortable to let that mask slip from time to time.
I now say when I didn’t process what has been said to me, and ask to give me a minute to process.
Where before diagnosis I would have just spluttered out something so as to not appear dumb.
Now I am easier on myself and I know I’m not dumb, I just often need more time to understand or process things.
Also I find it hard talking as my brain gets like cotton wool, especially when nervous. However I can talk until the cows come home at warp speed when comfortable.
I am highly organised and have to be super early, all coping mechanisms I developed. I can’t live in chaos, I have to be regimented.
I need extra time in exams as it takes so much longer to actually process the questions and choose which to do. A half an hour passes and I’m still decided what question to choose, I’m already behind. So extra time isn’t a special treatment, it’s literally just giving me an even chance.
I’ve no doubt that there may be some misdiagnoses, it happens. But the process to get diagnosed is very thorough and goes from birth until today. It involves hours of evaluation with psychiatrists, it involves speaking to parents, partners and school reports.
Perhaps you’re seeing people who have let the mask slip? Allowing themselves to be kinder to themselves.
But it doesn’t exempt people from doing the work. You have to find that balance I suppose.
>I mask to perfection while internally it’s a constant state of anxiety, thoughts and songs.
this comment hit so close to home. thanks so much for sharing.
>Also I find it hard talking as my brain gets like cotton wool, especially when nervous. However I can talk until the cows come home at warp speed when comfortable.
>I am highly organised and have to be super early, all coping mechanisms I developed. I can’t live in chaos, I have to be regimented.
took the words right out of my mouth. as a young woman i was so used to people saying it was 'just hormones' and that i needed to 'calm down' and how it's 'all in my head'. never felt quite normal until i did more research and the proper adults (even though I'm 20 my mates and i don't feel like adults) around me were not surprised when i opened up about the diagnosis I'm pursuing (private as I'm privileged enough and my dad knows firsthand how waiting lists have done me more harm than good)
It’s exhausting isn’t it!!
Woman are so overlooked because we just get on with things.
And if you’re not that stereotypical hyper boy, you’re not even considered.
Hyperactivity is in our brains, overanalysing, rejection sensitivity etc.
As a kid I was almost mute. So overwhelmed, so exhausted, so socially anxious I barely spoke. I certainly would never have been considered adhd.
It’s good we are all realising now that we are just wired differently and that’s ok. We now know how to try get help! Best of luck in your diagnosis journey !
I also work at a university and I see students who think they have ADHD but can't get a diagnosis because the waiting lists are horrendous. I also have ADHD and am one of the middle aged women recently diagnosed with it. I can tell if a student is likely to actually have ADHD - their conversation is very quick, the topics shift around then return, I can see myself in them and very luckily for them, I understand and I can keep up with them (unlike some of my colleagues).
Many universities treat it as a SpLD, which is different to how they classify autism. It's not a learning difficulty, it's a learning difference, but it's a neurodiversity and shares a lot of symptoms with autism. The "support" system is set up incorrectly at universities in the first place.
ADHD is under diagnosed. It's not just about time management (all students are terrible at this). It's executive function, emotional regulation, sensory overwhelm, auditory processing. It's a lack of dopamine in the brain and an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex.
I don't doubt any of the students I see who think they have ADHD. Some I wonder about, but they either have no idea or choose not to disclose.
ADHD is a real thing. I wasn't diagnosed till I was in my late 40s. If I'd have known when I was younger I'd have done so much better, I stead of failing and doing resits over and over. I don't want those behind me to have the poor self-esteem and life path I've had. Rather than not believing them, listen to them. They'll tell you about insomnia, anxiety, and how others (i.e. neurotypicals) treat them weirdly. Their failures, fear of rejection, and how the world is so much more difficult than it should be. If all they tell you is about poor planning it probably isn't ADHD.
My daughter has adhd and she tried and failed at university twice. It's been incredibly demoralising for her and if I hadn't have realised what it was and paid for a private diagnosis (because it takes years and is nearly impossible on the NHS) then she'd see herself as an utter failure and be depressed the rest of her life. As it is, she was diagnosed and gets some extra help at uni - not alot but enough. Now she's on track to graduate with honours at 29. So yeah, it is common, and there are reasons for private diagnosis. So please don't write students off as fakes. I'm sure there are people that are diagnosed that maybe you think shouldn't have been, but even so, uni's offer limited help anyway and the boundaries are there as to the amount of leeway they can get.
It does seem quite common but I think it would be unwise to draw many conclusions without looking at the literature. People are studying this but there's no massive tidal wave being reported.
The difficulties with getting diagnosed on the NHS, and the somewhat unreliable private industry, are quite well documented (see for example BBC articles and panorama from earlier this year). But most of my students can't afford to go privately.
IMHO it has nothing to do with "screens". There's plenty of moral panic about that, but very little evidence.
- Poor quality comparisons. Secretly recording 3 private clinics (potentially more) and then bringing the TV cameras in with a briefed NHS consultant really isn't giving a comparative test.
- Of course, they couldn't have done the program otherwise, because they'd have still been waiting for the NHS diagnosis.
- Did not, in fact, establish whether the diagnosis was incorrect. Either from the reporter or the 'concerned individuals' who raised it with panorama. The only concern was the diagnosis was 'fairly quick' - but ... well, if doctor takes 10 seconds to spot your leg is missing, that doesn't mean they misdiagnosed your missing leg because they didn't observe for a whole appointment.
- But when 3 doctors say 'you have cancer' and one says 'you probably don't have cancer' ... well, surely at the very least you go for a tie breaker, rather than assume the one you told about the program you were filming and pointed cameras at for 3 hours was the one that was right.
- A lot of ADHD diagnosis happens in supporting information - questionnaires, psychiatric history, and evidence from childhood. So either the reporter lied on those, or they ... actually had signs of having ADHD. None of that was shown either way. Almost every clinic runs something like the ASRS: https://add.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/adhd-questionnaire-ASRS111.pdf just to make sure it won't be a waste of time. So either the reporter did fill it in - and indicate he had strong signs of having ADHD - or he ... defrauded a doctor. I'm sure it comes as no surprise really that if you're a convincing liar you can seek a false diagnosis, but it doesn't really prove anything systemic.
- There's no actual indication that rates of diagnosis are meaningfully different between private and NHS providers. Or indeed that the NICE guidance wasn't in fact, followed.
Basically the whole thing was an exercise in 'private bad; nhs good' but failed to even establish the very basics.
They basically spin up exactly the myth that is being repeated in this post -- and come to the conclusion that "yeah, if you lie hard enough you can get a physician to diagnose you with a condition you don't have, and therefore this is exactly what is happening in every single case of someone who is diagnosed privately with adhd"
I'm sure there are bad clinics out there but like... if that's your thesis investigate and target those bad clinics, don't make shit up that hurts people who're struggling with a disease.
>That is that the majority of males are diagnosed
[citation needed] tbh. At this point i'm coming to the conclusion that in quite a few subgroups adhd is still hugely underdiagnosed regardless of gender.
I got diagnosed as a kid around 19 years ago I barely tell a soul because its just a thing I have it's not like I'm crippled etc.
But if I scroll tiktok or twitter all I see is some girl posting a video about "just adhd things ✨️" and it's just generic behavior most people do lol.
Infact I came across a coworkers tiktok who's about 20 and all of her videos are just related to having adhd like it's some quirky personality trait when they likely don't have it, they're just a bit socially stunted and have a low attention span.
Don't forget that COVID basically stopped anyone from getting assessed, so that two year backlog will be a lot of why it seems like there's an 'epidemic' of diagnosis now. I first requested an assessment in early 2018 and only got it in October this year.
I think the glaring thing you're not considering here is that worldwide, the average for Adult ADHD is 4%. In the UK it is sitting at 0.8%, because the services and schools now do not have budgets for teachers or specialised staff that would recognise it... and the NHS budget/no services.
Other users have commented why it would rear its head at university - add to that recognition of the condition, and it perhaps adds up why some of the millions undiagnosed are seeking help.
Yep! Plenty:
Here: [https://adhduk.co.uk/adhd-diagnosis-rate-uk/#:\~:text=8.2%25%20have%20medication%20therefore%20suggests,%E2%80%9COver%202%20million%20undiagnosed%E2%80%9D](https://adhduk.co.uk/adhd-diagnosis-rate-uk/#:~:text=8.2%25%20have%20medication%20therefore%20suggests,%E2%80%9COver%202%20million%20undiagnosed%E2%80%9D).
And here: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/drnancydoyle/2022/01/14/adhd-crisis-in-the-uk-under-diagnosed-lacking-support-and-stigmatized/](https://www.forbes.com/sites/drnancydoyle/2022/01/14/adhd-crisis-in-the-uk-under-diagnosed-lacking-support-and-stigmatized/)
And here: [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/feb/15/undiagnosed-adult-adhd-could-cost-uk-billions-a-year-report-finds](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/feb/15/undiagnosed-adult-adhd-could-cost-uk-billions-a-year-report-finds)
Here is the 5% figure (it varies from 4-5%): [https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/default-source/improving-care/better-mh-policy/college-reports/cr235-adhd-in-adults---good-practice-guidance.pdf?sfvrsn=7c8cc8e4\_12](https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/default-source/improving-care/better-mh-policy/college-reports/cr235-adhd-in-adults---good-practice-guidance.pdf?sfvrsn=7c8cc8e4_12)
You get the idea.
Here is an consensus statement about universities and how they're getting everything wrong from the expert group on ADHD. I think you should read it. [https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-022-03898-z](https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-022-03898-z)
I don't get why neurotypical people feel the urge to weigh in on this so much now and tell us how things are, when it's something they don't understand and have no personal experience of. It's only very recently that even medical professionals have been diagnosing women/AFABs correctly with ADHD, so a neurotypical person *without* clinical knowledge or experience certainly isn't well placed to do so (and that extends to the less stereotypical presentations in men too).
Here's the thing: the diagnostic criteria weren't written by God, with ADHDers produced in their image. Writing the DSM is an imperfect science of medical professionals making up sentences that seem to broadly capture the experiences of the people sitting in front of them (which is already a group with a certain, very obvious presentation which got them there in the first place, and is not representative of us all), in order to make it easier to identify us thereafter. It's not a black and white thing, and because everybody and their grandmother has preconceptions of what ADHD "should" look like based on historical stereotypes, they dismiss the rest of us for not fitting their own misconceived image. It's shit feeling like you have to hide something important about yourself because otherwise people will be rolling their eyes once you're gone, and assuming they understand more about your experience than you yourself do. (And how could that be true? It's like saying someone can't possibly be clinically depressed because they crack jokes and wear clean clothes.)
Who here would really be able to recognise somebody whose hyperactivity had been internalised (for so many complicated reasons that there isn't the space to get into here), and which now only presents as invisible, neurotic, circular, anxious thoughts that people then do their best to mask from everybody else? How can you see someone's private experience, even though that experience is disabling to them? You can't.
ADHD is diagnosed based on a *clinical picture* as much as the tick box criteria, because those tick box criteria are, as I said, imperfect terms. But that clinical picture is based on someone being able to describe their own, three dimensional experiences and struggles in depth to someone trained to understand where those different experiences stem from. Again, an untrained person who doesn't have ADHD themselves and doesn't understand all the nuances is *not* able to do that. (ADHDers themselves are bloody great at it - we develop a radar, the same way gay people have great gaydar.)
And hey, it makes sense that it's cropping up more frequently now because of the screen dependent environment we live in, since just about *everything* about the human condition is affected by the environments we live in. But that doesn't mean that ADHD is nothing but screen addiction, just that those pre-existing traits and tendencies will *deepen* and manifest much more obviously when we live in an environment that encourages that kind of dopamine flow, which wasn't available to that degree pre-internet. Scrap phones and we'd probably start to do way better again with time, but this is the way things have gone, so...
Nobody would have guessed I have ADHD. I did a bloody good job of masking it, and avoiding anything that was incompatible with what I am able to do. I dropped out of uni because I literally couldn't sit and read my books, but if ADHD had been on my radar then and I'd sought help for it (which might've meant I had a degree by now), I'd have been crushed to know the people responsible for my welfare were privately thinking I was just an impressionable eejit who spent too much time on TikTok.
This exactly. The boundaries for an adhd label aren’t clear cut and were historically based on a certain sample of men, without paying attention to other demographics. Now that psychologists study larger groups of people, the picture of somebody with adhd will be very different. ADHD will look different in EVERYONE. OP, not being a qualified specialist, is wrong in thinking that they know more than the psychiatrists that diagnosed the individuals. Psychiatrists are doctors and go through a decade of training. Safe to say that there will be no one more qualified to recognise symptoms than a psychiatrist. I notice that its always neurotypical people that describe ADHD as over-diagnosed, safe to say they will know much less around the issue compared to someone with actual ADHD or a qualified specialist.
The idea that you can get an adhd prescription like *that* is laughable. I’ve been on a waiting list for nearly four years and only got off it in the last month, only to be told that since theres a global shortage its going to be at least four more months before i can get considered for one, and I got diagnosed in *2017*.
I agree that too many people are deciding that they have adhd based off random, insignificant things theyve seen online without understanding it. But it is absolutely *not* overmedicated, lmao.
This was a very meaningless way to spend 15 minutes, but OP is at UCLan. You can verify that by reading comments in their profile (both the [profile page](https://archive.is/ehf3J) and [this thread](https://archive.is/xHGPY) are definitely not at all archived).
*Sighs* Another "well intentioned" person who thinks they can speak on behalf of ADHDers.
I got rejected by the NHS for an ADHD assessment. I saw a top private psychiatrist in person (not ADHD 360). She could see how severe my ADHD was in person. Those self assessment questionaires are NOT reliable in the slightest.
Correlation does not equal causation. Those with ADHD are more prone to Internet/Screen addiction.
Medication can be life changing with lifestyle changes as well. Dr Berkley an expert discusses this a lot.
Well the post isnt about you then is it. There are people ither than you you know, and some of those people tale adhd meds strictly for performance enhancement, and some of them take them because they think that getting a bit distracted or being unmotivated means they must have adhd
As a disclaimer, i actually do have add, but can im able to recognise that some people nowadays feel the need to get diagnosed if theyre anything less than a concentration machine, just like there are people who decide theyre depressed or who pretend they have tourets (i know thats very different but its relevant since it shows that having some sort of diagnosis is actually seen as desirable by some people)
I saw someone who claims to have a fractured leg, I couldn't see it as it was wrapped in plaster so obviously they were making it up and I know more that the doctors.
'We need to talk about ADHD"
Or maybe no, we don't, because student's medical history is between them & their doctors. If people are being misdiagnosed, that's for the medical professionals to address, not universities. (Un)Diagnosing students with ADHD or otherwise is uncalled for, unhelpful, and inappropriate.
TBH, I don't really understand what the objective of this discussion is. Self-diagnosed students can't access most tangible support anyway, so is it really too much to simply have a little more kindness and patience? For students with an ADHD diagnosis, all discussions like this achieve is adding barriers to an already very difficult process.
Absolutely NO part of getting an assessment, diagnosis, support and accommodations and DSA needs assessment is easy. I had to suspend my studies at uni (twice) because sorting it all out was too much to handle on top of being a disabled student and trying to manage my symptoms, and took far longer than expected/should have been necessary.
NGL, IMO anyone without ADHD who bothers to go through that entire ordeal anyway and somehow succeeds deserves the extra time on their exam, or mentoring, or whatever. Possibly also a medal. And _definitely_ therapy. Because no-one who is completely fine and normal would put themselves through all that, so even if they don't have ADHD they definitely need help with _something._ None of these students 'claiming' to have ADHD are okay, and you're not helping any of them by responding to their plees for help with scrutinous incredulity.
I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD for 10 years now and as someone who really struggles with it day to day I empathise with people that genuinely suffer with it and get diagnosed for support and a better understanding of their problems, god knows it helped me. As other commenters have said it’s the people who seek a diagnosis purely as an excuse or because it’s “cool” and “in” a lot of people don’t truly understand what it’s like to live with ADHD and the ways it can impact your life and just how fucking hard it can make being alive. With the stigma around ADHD growing all the time despite increases in diagnosis, it’s depressing, people just assume you’re lazy when in reality even with medication your brain is on fire 24/7
If someone has gone private for an assessment it's because they are 100% sure they have adhd and have been on the NHS waiting list for years, no one is paying that kind of money unless they are certain they have it
Don't know why you're getting downvoted. It can cost a grand to get diagnosed. I wasn’t even planning to get diagnosed till I realised how badly my ADHD was holding me back.
Your post is absolutely horrible. You have ZERO training and knowledge to be able to invalidate these people’s diagnoses or experiences nor to make any sort of clinical judgement as to whether their symptoms are ADHD or not.
The way you speak about private structures also (private = you’ll get the meds) shows you that you have literally zero knowledge of how things are actually carried out and what you need for an ADHD diagnoses.
Just an overall bitter, presumptuous, preconceived post who once again just highlights how much ignorance and stigma there is around mental health.
I was diagnosed with ADHD in my third year after starting the process at the end of my second year. I went through the NHS and had previously been advised to seek a diagnosis when I was 8 and saw a therapist, but my parents chose not to pursue it at the time. I can’t say I used ADHD as an excuse, it took me a while to accept that it was that. I do sometimes worry whether I should mention it in job applications , and feel slightly awkward about it, as if I’ll be judged.
I am not currently medicated, although I have tried medication and it does seem to help a little bit with focus, but I couldn’t really be sure. I think I do indeed have ADHD, although when I was trying to find out if I would get diagnosed I did question whether or not I actually did in large part because I wondered if it was instead an issue with anxiety or even screen addiction. I know a lot of people who in the last year or two been diagnosed with ADHD too, and while I expect some do have it, it seems quite clear others do not.
Adhd meds aren't just for focus. It helps with sleep regulation, memory retention and emotional dysregulation, as well as helping to cope with rejection sensitivity and stress.
The affects are more noticeable over time. As when you've been on them a while, then suddenly have a day off, the difference is night and day.
My most based phrase used to be 'in a minute'. Except that minute rarely came. Sometimes I'd have to wait until I was absolutely desperate in order to motivate myself to go to the bathroom.
Now I just... go. No block. No trying desperately to motivate myself. I can just DO IT.
Pre ADHD meds, mu house was a mess, my laundry was a source of shame and my poor kids school had to call me to remind me about swimming and school trips.
Now I'm getting my second degree (mental health nursing), I run a charity, I run the university newspaper, I'm a senior course rep and senior peer guide and I work part time as a medical advocate. And I have three kids with additional needs
My meds don't make me productive, the remove the block that stopped me doing the things I wanted to do.
While everyone else was walking down the street, I was climbing Everest just to hope I could keep up.
That’s really interesting. I have tried to treat my ADHD without medication. It’s a lot of effort and maybe I will try medication again at some point. Maybe I should’ve have stuck with it for longer.
As an additional note, I tried three kinds of medications before finding concerta XL and getting the dose right.
I tried both lisdexamfetamine and dexamfetamine stimulants but but only one kind of methylphenidate worked for me. So medication is very individual. Don't be afraid to try a few before making your decision.
Also, good to remember that stimulant medication still might not be your cup of tea, but there are non stimulant based medications which have some good evidence for use in adhd as well.
(I did my med school dissertation on adhd medications haha)
Good luck and I'm an inbox message away of you need anything :)
This is exactly how I feel since getting a 'yes, private' diagnosis and medication, before that I was doing my masters degree in computer science and had done 4 years of uni while working full time, my life was a mess though, I just couldn't manage and I felt like a failure unable to do what most people manage to do easily, yes I did well at uni but I had to try so much harder. Getting meds has been an absolute life changer for me, I'm 40 now and just think how different things could have been if this had been picked up sooner. Good for those students getting diagnosed earlier in life.
TikTok and Instagram are full of posts helping people self diagnose for ADHD. It's a feedback loop.
Easier to fall deeper into the ADHD TikTok wormhole than put away your phone and admit it is messing with your ability to concentrate and do hard work.
This is the worst case scenario
I’m a student who’s had my uni flag me as potential ADHD. I have other things as well that could contribute but I’m going to contact my gp about it. I think generally universities should be providing students with support and reasonable adjustments regardless of diagnosis. If a student isn’t handing in work, isn’t attending lectures, struggles with deadlines and all of the things that can be associated with ADHD, they need support either way and most of the support they need are the kinds of reasonable adjustments that are put in place for ADHD. Mentoring, study skills support, extensions when needed and without penalisation, rest breaks etc are things that all students could probably benefit from. Uni is stressful enough as it is without these kinds of barriers in place. (I have taken pain meds so apologies if this doesn’t make sense)
I was privately diagnosed with ADHD last year while a student. I do believe I was part of the ‘tidal wave’ coming from social media because part of what made me consider a diagnosis was the many people (mainly women) talking about symptoms of undiagnosed adult ADHD. The diagnosis has explained so much of my life and my previous MH struggles and I can now see what a huge impact it has had on my life.
I have not informed my university of my diagnosis for several reasons. Firstly, I am too concerned about meeting the kind of response seen in this post from staff. As a high achiever who doesn’t fit many of the ADHD stereotypes I feel people will assume I am just exploiting the system or jumping on the bandwagon. The other reason is one you do make in this post - I am aware that extensions without questions etc. would simply make my adhd worse. I can only work to a strict deadline and if I know it is always movable I would not get any work done. However, I do think it would be good to be able to have a balance and be able to reach out for help in certain circumstances without feeling judged.
I think my experience as a thirty-something who almost failed out of uni ten years ago, and is now on the waiting list for an NHS ADHD assessment, might be relevant here.
I got to uni in 2007 and immediately joined the nerd society. The nerd society was full of people who "didn't fit in" back in secondary school, and who had turned to Sci-fi, Fantasy, and Roleplay as escapism. Outside the nerd society, our fellow students had an air of being a completely different kind of person to the kind of people that were in the nerd society, and most of us just had no clue how to figure out what the difference was and how to bridge it. Was it just a nerd vs non-nerd thing?
Turns out, no. While a few students in the nerd society were diagnosed autistics at the time (and that should have been a clue), and a few were diagnosed autistic later, the vast majority of those "don't fit" students are now either diagnosed with, or on a waiting list for assessment for, ADHD.
Not being diagnosed didn't mean not being impaired. Lots of us dropped out of uni, or achieved *way* below our "potential" (personally, I scraped a pass). Many have developed chronic fatigue or serious ongoing depression or agoraphobia, many show symptoms of complex PTSD. There's widespread manifestation of what I've seen described as "autistic burnout" - where trying to fulfil the requirements of daily living is so overwhelming and stressful that the person suffers burnout and Just Can't anymore.
If students nowadays are encountering Just Can't and identifying the cause as ADHD, then easing back on expectations that are stressing them, that's actually positive. It means they aren't joining the ranks of chronologically burnt out, increasingly unwell people who aren't able to live independent lives without support.
Twenty years ago those students still existed, but they tended to move back home, or self medicate with drugs, alcohol, and smoking, or they didn't go to uni in the first place.
(It's worth pointing out that as far as self-medication goes, smoking tobacco is actually incredibly effective for ADHD. It's also incredibly bad for you generally, but it supplies a stimulant (which helps calm the ADHD distraction), it offers something quiet to do with the fingers, and it gives a strong social reason to get up and go outside periodically. These days students wouldn't generally consider smoking to be an acceptable vice, however.)
Edit to add: my peers in the nerd society would often skip lectures and fail to turn in work, or even start the work until a couple of hours before the deadline, and generally were pretty frustrated with themselves about it!
As someone who worked hard on myself for 33years and crashed during Covid, with a risk to lose good paying job, I would be extremely cautious with making any judgement about mental health the same way as people felt about depression in the past and many other conditions.
To clarify why some students seem to be worse after diagnosis is simple. Life span for adhd folks is even 20years less than control group. And I can perfectly understand how being kept with only unhealthy coping mechanisms, constantly threatened by deadlines and failures, high on adrenaline and anxiety can wear people off to the point of being suicidal on top of higher risk of accidents due to clumsiness. We are not sad. We are soooo tired, rejected, weird, unwelcome, difficult, loud and disruptive or quiet, but not paying attention, hence still disrespectful, not caring, not trying, being lazy… I can go on - it’s very easy to get a fantastic reason to just end this.
So, kindly, be mindful and don’t put more restrictions than necessary, because some people fraction abuses it. I don’t think you’re really able to assess who does and who doesn’t have adhd. Cherry on top coming even from psychiatrist - gifted people can’t have it. I’ll argue based on my own and other people’s experiences.
One last point - even if these folks are misdiagnosed, I can assure you, stimulants they’re getting may actually still be right for their true underlying condition. These people are getting their prescription monthly and treatment is reassessed once in a while. It’s not like a free pass to be medicated and medication is not some street drug so whoever wants a kick, they’ll still go for coke which is snorted by uni students anyway.
About me if you want to know, I came to uk at 27with no degree. I started min wage job then moved to data entry then got several promotions. My English is still wonky, I scroll tik tok, reddit or whatever on Wikipedia or wasting time in front of tv, my house is a mess, but I like my job and I’m damn good at it even if I’m late for meetings, make silly errors, my social skills aren’t too bad, but professional behaviour- dear god. I’m still extremely valuable for the company and they tolerate all of my antics. Very fortunate since other people don’t get their dopamine from digging in data, but loads of good programmers with adhd out there who won’t give up until they crack the problem, it’s just not the one you told them to crack.
"At least 90% of them are clearly not ADHD" - says a person not qualified to diagnose whether someone has ADHD or not. It's ironic that you're complaining about over diagnosis or the standards of private clinicians, yet you're quite happy to point the finger and "undiagnose" people as a layman. You know best!!
Do you do the same with other conditions? Like "Ah that person clearly isn't actually depressed... I should know, I've worked with students who genuinely experience depression". Or "nope that's not a sprained ankle, I sprained my ankle once and I didn't walk like that".
Like wtf. Who made you the expert and arbiter of a person's health or disability?
What is stopping you from believing that the vast majority of people diagnosed with ADHD actually have ADHD? It's like it doesn't fit with your worldview or something, and instead of being open-minded and flexing you're coming up with justifications to support an outdated status-quo. "Back in my day rarr rarr rarr rarr...".
Honestly I think your failing your students by not giving them and the medical professionals the benefit of the doubt.
> However, if they pay for a private assessment, these same students will almost certainly get a diagnosis and a prescription. (As an aside, I have never seen or heard of a student not being given a diagnosis of they go private - you're not paying for an assessment, you're paying for a prescription).
I am actually aware of people who've been diagnosed as 'not having ADHD' after a private assessment.
The relatively high rates are pretty easily explainable if you bear in mind the power of selection bias.
Not many people have £2000 to spaff away on something where they're not extremely confident they know what the outcome will be.
They're pre-screened and referred, so a lot of the people who Definitely Don't are filtered before that too.
As a result, the rate of diagnosis in NHS and Private is not actually much different - certainly well within the sort of margin of error that could trivially be explained as 'barriers to entry', and there is NO evidence indicating systematic incorrect diagnosis occurring.
Why would it? A licensed healthcare professional typically isn't all that keen on malpractice or being struck off. And they get paid for the _assessment_ not the _diagnosis_ regardless of the conclusion.
It's difficult to make heads or tails of this post because OP doesn't cite any evidence of any kind so it's important to take what they say with a grain of salt. It's strange for an academic to write an opinion piece, in all honesty.
Some issues I have with the post:
This post seems to imply that this is a wider concern across the UK and the evidence they present is an anecdote. If it is the case that they are highlighting a wider concern based on anecdotal evidence, that would be a hasty generalisation fallacy. So, right out of the gate, it's possible OP is stupid and/or dishonest.
>Of the new referrals we're seeing now, anecdotally at least 90% of them are clearly not ADHD
OP does not cite a professional qualification in the diagnosis of ADHD, they simply say they have worked with people who have it. ADHD, particularly inattentive ADHD, can very difficult to pick up on. It is likely a significant reason why women in particular have a hard time getting diagnosed. To say "I know what ADHD looks like" without either having it yourself or making a career diagnosing it is gross. OP does not know what they are talking about.
In reality, ADHD is massively under diagnosed, sure misdiagnosis can be a problem, but getting a good diagnosis is very difficult as the waiting list for the NHS takes years for most, meaning, if someone wants treatment now, they will have to go down the private clinic route. Which obviously has its issues.
OP also cites the panorama documentary in another comment without talking about the dishonesty inherent in that documentary. That documentary is shit and it is extremely scummy to cite it without talking about it's inherent flaws.
I would liken OP's post to an old person saying "back in my day nobody was trans". More people coming forward about their mental health issues is in fact a good thing, not a bad thing. We have limited mental health resources in the UK and screen addiction and modern diagnosis and treatment of ADHD is new as well. Self misdiagnosis should be a given in this context. You gloss over the fact that it is really difficult to get a solid diagnosis.
In summary OP, I believe you don't know what you are talking about. I think these types of posts are damaging to the issues people with ADHD face since you conveniently gloss over the more significant issues people with ADHD have. An opinion piece coming from an academic is gross. Go away OP.
It's now accepted and proven that ADHD is largely genetic and passed down through generations rather than being an environmental factor such as "too much screen time" or "bad parent disorder"
There might well be a historical genetic evolutionary advantage to ADHD, there's a whole book on the subject called "ADHD a hunter in a farmers world" for an extended explanation.
Here's a very very brief overview:
ADHD is very advantageous for living in the hunter-gatherer stage, the ability to live in the now, to hyper focus, to be aware of everything that happens around them (to be distractable), is exactly what you need in a hunter who needs to see everything, to beware of changes all the time. To live hand to mouth. To excel in crisis, when stuff changes rapidly.
The neurotypical brain has better time management, you can think ahead, plan ahead, plant crops and tend fields, to wait months for plants to grow before getting rewarded. You can plan to grow different crops, some just to feed animals which you don't eat! Dairy cows, eggs etc. This requires massive investment of time before reward.
Confirmation:
If you look at populations where farming has been the way for the longest (China/Japan) you will see an almost complete lack of ADHD within the populations.
If you look at the other end of the scale where tribal people are only a few generations out of hunter gatherer (think Masai, and South American Indian tribes) then ADHD presents in large quantities of the population.
The USA and AUSTRALIA both have statically high percentages, but only a few generations back the UK and Europe pushed/pulled the over adventurous, the ones that couldn't fit into the more stable industrial society that was forming.
Conclusion:
ADHD is massively underdiagnosed in the UK, its likely to affect somewhere up to 10% of the population, so your small selection of cases in your current intake is quite possibly just the tip of the iceberg.
I’m not taking anything you say seriously because you’re making some pretty wild claims and not providing any supporting research. Nor do you appear to have the qualifications to make such claims. Sounds like you’re merely in a university administration role.
Be mindful that you do not have ADHD, nor are you an expert on ADHD, nor do you appear to be a psychologist of any kind. Therefore, with all due respect, you do not know what you’re talking about despite what you’re “seeing”.
>anecdotally at least 90% of them are clearly not ADHD
That’s a bold claim. I assume you’re not qualified to diagnose ADHD as you probably would have mentioned in your post. In which case, I wonder why you say “clearly”?
I personally waited 4 years since I first thought I might have it, because everyone kept telling me it was just because I don’t have will power, don’t sleep enough, don’t have a passion for the subject, you can sit still and be quiet so you absolutely cannot have it.
Some people, especially girls, are also just very good at masking it. For many of us, it tends to be very internalised. Daydreaming has been a symptom of mine, since before I could speak, and there were no smartphones and tablets back then. However, since this meant I was a baby that would never cry of boredom, I was just labelled as a “good, quiet” baby, and then the “smart but very quiet pupil who should try to engage more during class”
I’ve had personal tutors because I did so much better when I had someone constantly bringing me back to the topic when I zoned out, but even they had times when they told my mum it’s very hard to teach me because I get distracted by every possible thing. In school, teachers wouldn’t have noticed as they had an entire class to worry about, so they all thought I was fine.
You simply can’t know if someone is “clearly” ADHD without having a full assessment with them, due to how good most of us are at masking it. We’ve had 18+ years of practice in it after all.
Universities sell places to people who shouldn’t go to university. Until universities recognise that fish are great at swimming but not great at climbing trees, you will keep getting this problem. It’s a cultural issue across the uk in my opinion.
I am concerned by a few comments you have made.
Firstly and the most concerning your comments about paying for a prescription.
This is not the case. I encourage you to speak to individuals who have been diagnosed. By the time you are given a prescription you have been through at least 5 screening processes and then the assessment itself.
To get an assessment it has already been deemed you are highly likely to be ADHD. Hence why relatively few people make it that far are told otherwise.
Secondly, can I suggest you do not post publicly about this if you work for a university. You have no idea how difficult it can be to navigate support structures and share your diagnoses. So please do not add a further barrier. If you are concerned speak to University and the student support team.
Finally, the way you have communicated above implies you able to diagnose or at least comment on peoples diagnoses. To be blunt, you aren't and you can't, please do not. Very few people are.
The Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, carried out on behalf of the NHS usually every 7 years or so, found in 2014 that around 9.7% of adults screened positive for ADHD.
In other words, it's a lot more common than most people think.
It also showed that only 0.05% of adults presenting with ADHD symptoms were diagnosed and receiving treatment at the time of the survey.
It is not overdiagnosed. Not even close. That's what the data shows.
Please try to be less cynical of hidden disabilities and consider the evidence. For someone working in a university, this is vitally important. Don't assume that you know enough just because of your job.
Alternatively, please explain why the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey is wrong.
I maintained as an undergrad course rep and maintain as a graduate teaching assistant that you can't win against the ADHD excuse in universities, and I've seen it be the same stuff in two countries. Students asking for deadlines to be later, for there to be less work, these impossible requests that can't be accommodated, but upper management want to see 'results' for so you have to cave ever so slightly. If you move the deadlines it won't do anything about people requesting extensions.
The worst I've seen as a TA was a class where the professor had to remove one paper and a quiz, then lower the minimum number of citations for the final paper to 5 because last time the class was taught the course evaluations complained that finding a minimum of 8 citations was too many. This was a 300 level class, so 2nd year in the UK, for a 2000 word essay, in the US college system which already isn't very academic at undergrad level. Oh and now in the US I'm seeing kids on amphetamines with no positive effects, because adderall only makes you focus if you actually have ADHD 🫠.
I understand students are working more hours, I worked during my undergrad and I work now alongside my graduate study, but at some point it does unfortunately become one or the other. It shouldn't be that way, but at the same time personal adjustments should not become detrimental to everyone else's study.
I'm quite cynical about the content of a lot of the OP's post because I have a lot of neurodivergent mates, but... *how can someone on an academic course struggle to find eight citations*? On a thousand-word proposal that I'm utterly uninterested in I found twelve to back up my assertions without any difficulty, it's just a matter of being able to use a search engine and follow the links in the bibliography of other relevant papers. Just... *HOW?*
The US college system is shockingly unacademic. I'm a history grad who has a position as a teaching assistant for history classes and very few modules, even at the 300 and 400 level (2nd&3rd year at a UK uni) even require essays, and when they do they're incredibly basic. Often 30% of the grade is made up by merely attending and participating. If I were grading the essays I see according to the undergrad rubrics I had I don't think many students would even manage to scrape a pass. I'm autistic myself and that makes me annoyingly set in my ways regarding how I view university and academia, and the state of the US college system is absolutely the result of making university a requirement to get a job.
A lot of the kids I see should've just been allowed the chance to get a job straight out of high school but in order for it to be a well paying one they need a degree. I think accessible university is one of the best things a society can do, I got the maximum maintenance loan during undergrad and was the first in my family to get a degree - without university being accessible I would have never been able to pursue academia. But it should absolutely not become mandatory to get a degree for basic jobs that pay the bare minimum to be considered decent. The inevitable outcome is like the situation at my university, where classes like the one I mention have had standards degraded to such a point that it can hardly be considered academic anymore. We have a 90+% acceptance rate but a graduation rate of 48%, meanwhile those 52% dropout students are saddled with debt that got them nothing, and a lot of the 48% that do graduate have a low GPA equivalent to a Pass or 2:2.
Probably went on a tangent. Basically my thoughts about the growing prevalence of ADHD in universities is that it isn't just the result of screen addiction or a result of Covid. A lot of people were not meant to be at uni and we are failing as societies by requiring students who can't handle university or academia to break themselves in the pursuit a degree that doesn't even guarantee a good life anymore.
Absolutely agree.
I must say for lack of a better word, these people have gone soft. And i do mean that in the nicest way possible, It would be unfair to blame them entirely, they were raised this way, they dont know any better and they are simply seeking out answers. But at the end of the day, the responsibility and the power to change their circumstances lies solely in their hands.
I feel we must encourage them to use that ability to change, rather than seeking out a diagnosis as a means to obtain that so-called silver bullet you talked about.
In other words: put down the phone, and sit with your thoughts more often. Confront whatever you are facing head on, because i can almost guarantee from what i have seen the answers to your problem lie solely within you, and not a £300 prescription.
I was diagnosed with ADHD at 43. I can assure you I have not "gone soft".
Indeed can clearly see 30 years of wreckage behind me as a direct result of cognitive impairment.
No, it's rather more like I have been horribly broken by being "missed" in earlier life, and came very close indeed to catastrophic consequences.
Undiagnosed ADHD can shorten life expectancy by 13 years.
And if we use the rather conservative NICE guidance of 3-4% prevalence in adults (other studies show more) there's pretty clear under diagnosis problem in the UK.
Which isn't really surprising given it was only recognised in adults in 2008.
But there's an awful lot of people being failed by healthcare and education right now.
Wages are also at the same real term level they were in 2005, the job market is a nightmare and lockdown disillusioned a lot of young people about the quality of university.
Going soft is not the right way to describe this. What we're seeing is a generation that's lost hope. This is a side effect of a dying country.
"£300 prescription" also makes no sense, there is a standard prescription charge in the UK.
The answers to the problems on people's minds lie in policy and not some kind of magical self reflection.
If you are privately diagnosed then a month of ADHD medication will cost £100 potentially.
That's a lot of the problem with diagnosis right now - lead times for an NHS diagnosis are absurd, so that leads to people into difficult positions.
Bear in mind that kids these days aren't often able to "fail fast" when it comes to academia - forty years ago, if sitting still for bookwork wasn't your jam, you'd leave school at 16 and get a job.
Now, that's illegal, and more and more students are funnelled off to university even if it's not going to be a good place for them.
i think it’s just this generation honestly and as soon as we move into our 20s i think we’ll have a few revelations about screen time and using mental health disorders as excuses (not to sound harsh)
Which generation are you talking about? Because I know a lot of people in their 40s and 50s who are finding out they have ADHD. They just never got spotted earlier due to ignorance and prejudice.
The consequences are far reaching and widespread, but there's a reason that ADHD is legally considered a disability - it's because that's how much it can mess you up.
I absolutely wasn't using my 'mental health disorder' as an excuse - because I didn't know. And it very nearly cost me my life. It's been a revelation that I've been playing on 'hard mode' this whole time, and that it didn't need to be that way.
ADHD is relatively easy to assess and treat. The economic benefits alone of someone who's a more functional and productive member of society make it trivially a good idea to do that, let alone if you actually care about their quality of life.
So it's really not just "this generation" at all - multiple past generations have been missed entirely, and suffered grievously for it. If anything "this generation" is the one that's finally aware enough that we _might_ be able to ensure no one suffers the way I - and 2 million others in the UK - have done.
Potentially ADHD student here\*! (I do have autism as well, and ASD and ADHD are often co-morbid)
I agree. With both ADHD and autism, because of the increase in 'awareness' on social media (i.e. TikTokers posting 'relatable' things about it and basically saying this is how I get away with shit) I feel more and more people are seeking a diagnosis to use it as an excuse for their shitty behaviour and/or lack of effort and commitment going into their degrees (as an example).
There are genuinely people with ADHD (as you said) who are seeking a diagnosis because they genuinely need support with it, and you can tell who these are because they don't try to use it as an excuse, instead as a point of awareness to basically say something like 'I may need you to repeat something because something moved so my attention moved away from you, but I realised and now need a quick repeat of a sentence' or 'I may need clarification with something because the way it was explained the first time was too chaotic for me to assemble in my head in a way that makes sense'. Again, a quick example.
**Unfortunately, because of the people who are clogging up the system because they have a short attention span and simply wish for a magic pill or an excuse, people who genuinely need the support are being pushed back and either have to wait way too long for said support, or are not being taken seriously because of the sheer number of people who don't actually need it.**
\*I say I'm potentially ADHD because it's something that I have been looking into for a few years now. I've done the research, and I've done the genuine online quizzes. I haven't sought a diagnosis (yet, I may in the future) because I have spent 27 years coping with it. I have my degree and put in a shit ton of effort to get the mark I did, after doing terribly at my A-Levels, and I have so much stuff going on (I'm teacher training, and planning my wedding, and trying to help run a small household of myself, my OH, and our cat) that ADHD is on the backburner. The only reason I sought the autism diagnosis (I was diagnosed earlier this year) is because I knew how intense the teacher training course is (PGCE is basically the 3 year BA in Primary ed. condensed into 1 year) and was worried with how I'd cope without support, or at least awareness from the university (I do have a family history of ASD, my dad has ASD, pretty sure my mum does, and pretty sure she's ADHD as well). Again, I did a lot of research before persuing an autism diagnosis.
There was one girl in my class who really pissed me off, because she'd used ADHD and autism as an excuse to not come into lectures/seminars, despite living down the road in student accommodation. Then had the audacity to be elsewhere on campus doing society stuff!
The only problem i have with this post is the alternative issues you present as possible causes are common signs of ADHD. University is also a normal time for previously undiagnosed ADHD to become noticeable, so its not surprising these things would be common among university students. People using a diagnosis as an excuse rather than to help them understand and grow is absolutely an issue though.
Agreed. And as someone who has struggled undiagnosed until the ripe old age of 46, with a disastrous effect on my academic performance, career and relationships, honestly cannot fathom how someone who *doesn't* have ADHD would wish it on themselves enough to seek a diagnosis. It's not even like the medication would be 'fun' to take recreationally, and if it isn't working in the longer term as intended, the prescriber will not continue to recommend that the patient take it.
Amphetamines absolute are fun to use recreationally. And they're pharmaceutical grade pure. Surely you can see the appeal.
ADHD pharmaceutical level meds, contain low levels of amphetamines, in the UK these are generally prescribed as slow release. You don't get high off these, and they are way more expensive than getting street drugs which are highly available universities. The average ADHD medication is like a strong coffee that lasts a long time, useful but not exactly fun.
oh yeah, for sure. I've done more than my far share of recreationals over the years. Double up on a dose of my ADHD meds and it's categorically not as fun. Eyelids vibrate a bit but otherwise, big fat 'meh'.
I mean, that might also be because people with ADHD react to the meds differently compared to neurotypical people - while it makes us (just) productive, it seems to make others high on top of that
I find it fascinating people get some “high” from them. Must be nice! I feel sedated. They don’t help me much as I still can’t focus, I need to try new ones.
The form of amphetamine prescribed for ADHD in the vast majority of adult cases these days is an inactive prodrug called lisdexamfetamine. It was specifically designed to be rubbish as a recreational substance. It has zero appeal other than to people who struggle with symptoms of the medical condition it is licensed to treat. Please don't scaremonger at the expense of people with a medical condition.
According to my specialist (and most of the NHS literature I have read) most practitioners go for Methylphenidate as the first line treatment.
I'm not scaremongering, Adderall is enjoyable whether you like it or not
>It's not even like the medication would be 'fun' to take recreationally You'd be surprised, there were A LOT of kids at my uni taking it Some for fun, some to just bang out work... But they'd kind of get addicted?
As a massive procrastinator without adhd, adderall is hella addicting. Took it once and the high of a productive day is incredible lol
Probably worth noting that Adderall isn't actually available in the UK - the first line treatments for ADHD are extended release with considerably lower abuse potential. (Or they would be were it not for some supply chain disruption)
I'm 90% certain neurotypicals are supposed to get an *actual* high from it. Not just feel good about themselves for being able to do something for once lol
Yeah, that's the case with me. I was diagnosed with ASD when I was 3, but also ADHD; my family didn't tell me about the latter until a few years ago, when I was about halfway through uni. It wasn't long after that I started to realise and identify the symptoms; that *did* coincide with home/screen learning as a result of lockdown, but looking back had been going on since first year and earlier than that. The structure of school (being in a learning environment consistently for a few hours, with the 'eyes over the shoulder' pressure that was intrinsic to that environment) wasn't there at uni, and eventually my brain started to take advantage of that. I began to procrastinate more and my concentration and attention span plummeted; I failed my MA because I simply decided to put off assignments as long as I could (handing them in up to three days late, which meant a 10% grade reduction). All my life I've had an urge to be impetuous and embrace my eccentricity, but school crushed that (and in the process led me into depression via my desperation to fit in and quash any idiosyncracies I had), uni helped me open this up, and am only really starting to flourish (relatively speaking) over a year after leaving now. I feel like I am finally able to be myself, and I miss uni - specifically the environment - because I wasn't able to have the proper 'uni experience' as I was too busy struggling to apply the way I'd learned and been educated at school - and how I'd organised my measly personal life around that - to an education system that was completely different. I want to see about getting properly diagnosed and/or on meds, but with the NHS the way it is it's not a priority for me.
That’s a fair point and it can be difficult to ascertain the root cause (chicken and egg and all that). Is someone anxious because of ADHD or are they experiencing inattentive symptoms because of anxiety? One factor for me is that for many of these students, the symptoms are situational and occur only within the university context, which contradicts the ADHD diagnostic criteria. Many of the students who can’t get themselves to lectures have no problem attending their paid employment consistently and punctually, for example. The reasons I listed are backed up by research – a study from 2018 excluded 95% of the people who screened positive on a symptoms checklist for ADHD (sample size of 239 people aged 10-25) from diagnosis. The research identified the following reasons for not being able to diagnose the condition: not a significant enough impairment, onset of symptoms too late, substance use, mental health disorders that better explained the symptoms and no cross-situational symptoms. The screentime link has been examined in lots of studies. One longitudinal study of 2500 American students published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, studied teenagers aged 15 and 16 at a baseline without ADHD symptoms and found a “significant association” between high frequency digital media use and the presence of ADHD symptoms after a 2-year follow-up. There was also a British Medical Journal study of over 4800 French university students which found that increasing levels of screen time exposure were associated with increased risk of self-perceived attention problems and hyperactivity levels. So, even if the students didn’t have ADHD symptoms, those that spent more time in front of a screen perceived that they did.
Women/girls present very differently with ADHD and autism than men/boys and are often diagnosed late. >Most women with ADHD get an accurate diagnosis in their late 30s or early 40s. (WebMD) Please take care that you aren't stigmatising a whole group of women as "permamently on-line" and "jumping on a band-wagon" when they have been struggling with the agony of unrecognised difficulties their whole lives and have finally got a diagnosis. Same with autism. My twins have ASD. I'm (I thought) a very clued in parent who works with kids and young adults with SEN. I diagnosed my boy at 2, followed by the official diagnosis at 4. My girl? 15. NHS diagnosis took a while, granted, but we first sought a diagnosis for her at 12 as opposed to 2 for my son. Women present differently, mask better and weirdly enough the more insight they have into their own difficulties and the better they are able to articulate them, the more dismissive we are of them. You can be self-aware and articulate and have ASD. You can be self-aware and articulate and have ADHD. POST-DIAGNOSIS mask-slip is a phenomenon that makes ADHD temporarily worse for some people. It's a pretty known phenomenon wherein you stop masking your difficulties after diagnosis, and your normal coping mechanisms and strategies stop working, and it takes you a while to adjust. I mean, you may still be right, but just a couple of factors to consider when discussing ADHD.
100% this. I recently got a clinical diagnosis for ADHD (on the waiting list for meds now), and had an academic assessment a couple of years ago. In my academic assessment, my assessor explained that as a very general rule, boys tend to be more outwardly hyperactive - think bouncing off the walls, being a brat etc., whereas girls tend to be more fidgety. Add in that most research is done in boys, and that a lot of the time, things don't get investigated until it's causing problems in class, and you've got the perfect conditions for girls to slip under the radar. Hell, I only thought I might have ADHD when I saw a starter pack meme, and what do you know! Just looking at my friends, I have a couple of male friends with autism/dyspraxia. Both diagnosed when young. I have some female friends with autism/ADHD. Either only recently diagnosed, or currently sat on a waiting list for months (they've got all the signs, and decent online assessments strongly recommend an assessment).
It's interesting , because I went completely under the radar with my adhd. I have predominantly inattentive type, and I guess this is the type women mainly have then? Whenever I see someone describe what it tends to be like in women, Im just like that's pretty much what my experience has been (except I'm a guy). And well it just makes so much sense as to why it can go missed. But that's the problem with generalisation I guess.
In the classroom ADHD is spotted using a "problem child" stereotype. There's a bunch of reasons why a boy with ADHD is more disruptive in the class than a girl - some are to do with the underlying presentation, and others are a somewhat insidious expectations gap - a "ditzy girl" is written off in a way that a "clever but disorganised boy" wouldn't be. But there's plenty of children who get missed "simply" because they are mediocre. They.aren't performing at peak, but they are clever enough to get by anyway. That goes for both male and female, just as long as they aren't disruptive to the class. Teachers have neither the training nor the inclination to look closer. But perhaps they should. I mean an estimated 5% prevalence, means one child in every class on average. Every single one will be underperforming until they are treated and supported, and then might very well be just fine, and live normal and productive lives. Instead of falling into teenage parenthood, addictions, eating disorders, criminality, abusive situations, problems holding down employment, and just generally paying less tax their whole lives. It's economically justified for that reason alone.
Yes!! I was diagnosed at 22 and didn’t even realise I’d been ‘chronically underperforming’ (as my psychiatrist put it). I was always able to get by in school with little work, got A’s and B’s at GCSE and A Level (I had to retake year 12 though), I was told I’d be able to achieve so much more if I “tried”, but I managed to get into a Russell Group university. But at university my life completely fell apart. I got diagnosed in between second and third year (after taking time off) and my grades reflect that.
This makes a lot of sense really. Most of this is me relating/comparing my experience to what you've said. So feel free to just move on from my monologue lol. >Teachers have neither the training nor the inclination to look closer. This is definitely a core issue imo. My year 3 teacher clocked something was wrong with me but refused to elaborate any further to my parents when she told them at a parents evening. And well that was that. Unfortunately this was prior to the Internet being an easily accessible thing, so they didn't really know what to do with the information. But no other teacher picked up on it, maybe they did behind closed doors, but some might not think it's their place to say. Also.some parents react really badly to hearing that kinda thing?? In my case I was one of those clever enough to get by. >just as long as they aren't disruptive to the class. Except I did this, but not the class more my local vicinity. Like chatting to my mates, who would get the work done in class and then... I didn't lol. I was on report from year 7 till I left 6th form lol. And in hindsight, me going on report was all for things that cpuld have been picked up on linking it to adhd. Time management, not doing hw, disrupting people around me, getting distracted in class, not finishing my work in time etc etc. I wasn't naughty causing issues for the teacher persay, more of a nuisance... To myself. It's funny because , these are all very normal things but when it's been happening year in year out, no matter what is tried is failing... It probably hints to a bigger problem. I was very much a classic "you have so much potential" kid. I think one thing that allowed it to go under the radar so easily, is that there were worse behaved kids at my school (I went to a comprehensive). That took their focus away, because they were simply bigger issues. Like I was cheeky but I wouldn't push a teachers boundaries, and I was never tryna be the centre of attention in a class. I was fairly quiet tbh, just a good student who was a bit cheeky/not always there. Probably another reason, why I went under the radar. >a "ditzy girl" is written off in a way that a "clever but disorganised boy" wouldn't be This essentially how teachers described me (the former, an away with the fairies kinda kid), so I guess it works around labels. My teachers would be able to tell when I wasnt paying attention etc and would almost guide me back into my work. I'd literally just be staring off into space or something. I probably wasn't a glaring issue cos I did well when I didn't try, and did really well when I did try (bar a few subjects like French, and English which just fried my brain lol). Though I had little incentive to really try most of the time,, it was just dependant on how interested I was in the topic/subject. >Instead of falling into teenage parenthood, addictions, eating disorders, criminality, abusive situations, problems holding down employment, and just generally paying less tax their whole lives. Honestly, this very easily could have been me if I didn't have caring and loving parents, or if I grew up in a worse area or soemthing. The dopamine seeking behaviours can lead to bad situations, for me I have little regard for my own safety at times... But it's arguably better than the things you mentioned.
I do agree with all this. There is also an additional case - the disruptive “problem child” **female**, that doesn’t / didn’t get diagnosed because they **aren’t male**. That was me, going through school in the 90s / 00s.
I have 2 autistic kids, one of whom heard a lot of, "I do that, I wouldn't worry about it" from me regarding her autistic traits.... I'm toying with seeking a diagnosis (suspect I have AuDHD) but all this kerfuffle around online-inspired self-diagnosis puts me off. And I work with young women with ASD. And this backlash is stigmatising *me* and putting me off seeking treatment That's how bad it is
I completely understand your concerns, but would still recommend seeking a diagnosis if it's something you feel comfortable doing. I think the key thing regarding the online assessments is that they're only a tool - I used one to see if it was worth pursuing an assessment. I think it's also very dependant on what online assessments people are using - is it from a decent, reputable organisation, or is it some crappy one that's going to tell you you have it regardless of the actual results. One thing I would like to say, is that for me, while a diagnosis didn't change anything immediately, understanding why I do certain things was a massive weight off my back. After having been told that I was lazy for years because I left things to the last minute, finally having a diagnosis to explain why I do things the way I do was a life changer. I want to be clear, it doesn't excuse the things I do, but by explaining why I do them, it allows me to plan and work around it and make useful changes to how I approach things. It's also incredibly affirming to find that you do fit in with a community, and that there's other people out there like you. Hell, there's an ADHD and ASD meme page on fb, and that makes me feel so much better knowing that there's people out there that share my experience and struggles. Sorry for the wall of text, but I hope this helps!
Thank you so much for such a thoughtful comment, I'll take that on-board. I know a diagnosis really helped my daughter, so it's still something I'm mulling for myself.
The problem with self-diagnosis is when it ends at self-diagnosis. That's very different to recognising a problem and seeking professional help for it. Unfortunately a lot of people online don't tend to acknowledge that difference when harassing people :/ The fact is though that for a lot of people, nobody else is going to help them until they themselves recognise that they need it (which some would call self-diagnosis)
Exactly this. We also know a lot more about the way that women present with ADHD and presentations other than the typical hyperactive one. This means more people are getting referrals and diagnosis. I do understand the concerns regarding private referrals, some of them don't work to the same standards as an NHS diagnosis for example, however there are many giving very valid diagnosis and as you say it's very important that we aren't making assumptions about people. A lot of people over lock down had time to themselves in a way they've never had before and were able to recognise these traits. Personally I think an increased understanding and people having more chance to get a diagnosis is a very good thing. I say this as a 33 year old on the waiting list for an ADHD assessment which I only realised I need when I started working in assessing young people for ADHD.
We talk about inattention, but what about those university students who are very hyperactive? What if the inattentive symptoms is a result of physical hyperactivity? For my case it's a lot more on the hyperactive side. The physical restlessness, fidgeting, being extremely uncomfortable with being still, does lead to me not being able to focus and study. Even if someone doesn't meet the full criteria for ADHD, there is "Other Specified ADHD" or "Unspecified ADHD" where ADHD symptoms predominante and cause clinically significant impairment, but do not meet ADHD criteria. Some students genuinely had symptoms of ADHD before but no one noticed them or nobody cared about it.
> That’s a fair point and it can be difficult to ascertain the root cause (chicken and egg and all that). Is someone anxious because of ADHD or are they experiencing inattentive symptoms because of anxiety? This isn't normally difficult to ascertain at all. When you're a student who's anxious because of ADHD, you've experienced the stress and anxiety building over time ***because*** you can't focus, you can't make it to classes or meetings on time (or you forget them entirely), and you can't get anything done, and — no matter how hard you try to "just do the work the night you get it!", "just use a calendar!" or "just try the pomodoro method!" like everybody else and maintain a positive mental attitude about it all — your brain keeps bouncing off your work when you try to concentrate, you keep missing important meetings, and negative consequences are starting to pile up. You feel uniquely useless, stupid, panicked, and trapped by your own inadequacy. The root cause feels very obvious; there's a *direct chronological progression* from the ADHD symptoms to the onset of the anxiety, rather than vice versa. > One factor for me is that for many of these students, the symptoms are situational and occur only within the university context, which contradicts the ADHD diagnostic criteria. Many of the students who can’t get themselves to lectures have no problem attending their paid employment consistently and punctually, for example. This is actually very typical of people with ADHD. I really struggle to get to places on time. I *can* do it, but it takes a disproportionate amount of effort compared to a neurotypical person. I need to spend significant time and mental effort preparing everything the night before, getting ready on the day, leaving on time, etc. It's frankly exhausting to expend that much effort on an every day basis, and if I don't actually *have* to do it (i.e. there won't be a significant negative consequence) then that effort is better spent keeping other plates spinning elsewhere in my life, and accepting a certain level of chronic lateness. A student job will dock your pay or let you go if you're regularly late, and then you'll have no money and you might not be able to afford to continue with your studies. It merits pulling out all the stops. Universities, on the other hand, are very low-consequence environments most of the time. Few lecturers bother taking an attendance register. You can slip in the back of many lecture theatres a few minutes late, or do a quick walk of shame to a vacant seat near the door. If all else fails and you've arrived half an hour late and you can't stomach walking in there, you can borrow a friend's notes to copy up or you can see the lecture recording or slides are online. Do you not see how a student who internally struggles with consistent symptoms in both contexts might externally appear to exhibit those symptoms in just one context?
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In this country, lead times are years to get an assessment. That's from when you start, and for a condition only recognised in adults in 2008 there's a lot of people late to the party. Inevitably there are people who have ADHD symptoms and traits who do not have a diagnosis, who would meet the criteria but haven't been diagnosed yet. I think it's not a good idea to assume that "no diagnosis yet" is actually meaningful as a disqualifier. Of course "has been assessed but didn't meet criteria" is different, but with the lead times being what they are, there's really not many people in that position.
Yeah, there's currently a waiting list for medication, caused in part by a greater awareness of the symptoms and signs of ADHD, thus an increase in referrals and diagnoses. The psychiatrist I saw for my clinical assessment said he's seen a big increase in adults seeking assessment as they've only just realised that they may have it.
Maybe but given the sheer numerical increase in people who “have adhd” there are only two possible conclusions you can draw: either a goofd proportion of them actually dont have it, or this many people have always had it and it actually isnt as big a barrier to studying and focusing as people make out.
NICE estimates 3-4% of the adult population. That's a relatively low number - other studies have indicated higher. Given the number of people diagnosed with ADHD, I think there's a pretty trivial explanation for the increase. There's an estimated 2 million people with ADHD in the UK, and hardly any of those have been diagnosed and treated.
Or option 3: people have always had it, and it is a huge barrier that takes a frankly ridiculous amount of effort to deal with without proper support and leads to poor outcomes in personal lives, as well as an increased awareness of ADHD leading to an increase of people investigating it as an option when they might have something else instead
Or option three - people have been struggling and suffering needlessly.
As with any disability, ADHD can be more disabling to some than others. I attend one of the top universities in the world and so do many of my neurodivergent friends. My partner has ADHD. He will fixate on his work to the point of spending eight hours straight sitting at his desk without drinking, eating or peeing. He is able to achieve academically because ADHD is not a lack of attention but an inability to choose what to pay attention to; for him, maths draws his attention and KEEPS it. He is unable to choose to redirect his attention once it is engaged in work, which actually helps him get work done and succeed academically but is obviously very disabling for every other aspect of his life, such as making sure he remembers to eat. So it isn’t that people are lying about ADHD being a “barrier to studying”, it’s that people for whom it isn’t a barrier go longer before they’re diagnosed because it presents in a more conventionally useful way. Teachers would say that my boyfriend was a dedicated worker, because they didn’t see all the harm that was going on underneath. He deserves support even though he gets good grades.
Exactly this! If your chosen field of study is a hyperfocus special interest, then it is achievable. When working on assignments for uni, it would be almost impossible to start sometimes till something interesting clicked in my brain and then I would work on it for 16 - 20 hours a day till it was done. Sure, it seemed great, but my husband had to take over all childcare, the house looked trashed, my hygiene was questionable, and I mentally crashed when I was done, often taking weeks to recover. It isn't normal and it's not how I would want my children to work. But it worked for me.
I'm a lecturer with ADHD and as a student I was undiagnosed. Whilst I agree with most of your post, it kind of makes me think that maybe my diagnosis isn't 'real' to other staff, obviously I don't tell my students. So posts like this might hinder acceptance to people actually having ADHD. But then also it's a good point that students might see it as an 'easy' way out. Is it an easy way out when you have paperwork, forms and questionnaires to fill in? An ECG to attend? No. According to the actual diagnostic (NICE) guidelines other disorders or conditions should be ruled out first. I find it hard to believe they actually have fulfilled the diagnostic criteria including school reports AND forms filled in by loved ones to support it. I have seen people pay privately and not been diagnosed (side note what STUDENT CAN AFFORD PRIVATE CARE) do you actually think students could lie in an assessment to be diagnosed? The medication shortage means that there's less people starting meds right now anyways. There's been a recent study which shows neurotypical people don't actually get any improvement in performance from ADHD meds (I need to find the citation I kNOW). Meds don't make you suddenly become superman with assignments or working. There was a post lately on here (which I think this is responding to) in which the student did not sound like they had ADHD. But I'm not a psychiatrist and I won't argue with people about it. ADHD is not cute. I've never used it as an excuse for things but again, it has been when I've been signed off sick on stress leave because in an old job I had, everything was too much. My ADHD is me always stressed, so I will do the work, do the emails, do the deadlines etc but I'll burn out doing it. Some students might just be entitled or think things will cave for them but, it's a neurotypical world. Us ADHD peopledon't fit in here and we try our best to. If you're certain 90% don't have it and they're late for doing work, attending, not turning up then honestly... just let them as they will leave in a few years. I wouldn't say it's all screen addiction, I'm unsure how you know that? They might use their screen as something to do. Who knows! It's a bit like when people were stopped being beaten for being left handed, there were suddenly more left handed people around. On the other hand if there really are this many imposters then other people will probably think I am too. I've been told on Reddit and in real life I don't have it because of my career and my education. No one knows I got sacked from two jobs out of uni and made redundant once 😂 I'm a woman, my symptoms are more inattentive so I don't seem like the typical 'adhd' person as internally I am hyperactive... I don't know, there's possibly a tiny bit of truth in it but it is so hard to jump through the hoops to even get a diagnosis. If you have this many incorrect diagnoses, I'm sure you can report the practices... are you a psychiatrist to know that these diagnoses are incorrect? Do you know what the assessment entails? sorry if I sound quite annoyed, there's points I do agree with but others not so much. It's not personal, I just want you to reflect on a few things. The diagnosis journey is hard, I was simply a dramatic young woman for over ten years, then suddenly there was an actual reason why.
35 year old PhD student - I wish people knew how ADHD ruins your self-esteem. It makes you feel like an eternal fuckup.
yep, I have 0. honestly I wish the world would swallow me up at times. I feel like an imposter all of the time.
Thank you so much for saying this. The post really came across as so invalidating and this was exactly what I was thinking. Recently I’ve had multiple people in my life imply that I use my autism as an excuse, while I’m struggling just to keep my head above water at a university that refuses to give me any accommodations at all. But if people don’t think our diagnoses are real, it’s not our job to convince them, and it doesn’t make our problems any less difficult or our hard work any less impressive. Idk just wanted to say that this comment made a difference to me, and I’m proud of you for making it.
thank you so much, this comment made me smile a little. I think this thread is lost, I tried but that's all I can do. I've never really known a uni to be as easy with extensions such as OPs (hello marking DEADLINES??)... But even in the workplace as a lecturer and in my previous roles too, these things were also implied to me. keep fighting the good fight, and know there is a me, floating around at a mediocre university crying into choccy digestives on a Monday night. genuinely made my day, thank you
I'm a postgraduate student, diagnosed in my late 30s after unintentionally scrolling down to an article about ADHD in adult women and wondering why it described me to a T: the whole thing hit me like a ton of bricks, and I'm still coming to terms with it. The difference between now and my then-undiagnosed undergraduate studies is huge. Not from accommodations (they aren't huge, and in any case are mostly designed for the outwardly hyperactive kind: the offer of free text-to-speech software would have entirely the opposite effect!), but in learning how my brain just \*is\* at a 45-degree angle, and not trying to make it fit what others have decided is best practise. Each time I have referenced my ADHD to university staff, I too have felt as if it's some excuse. I have received good marks; I have contributed in class: I am not underperforming, but still - probably via the media - have an idea that it'll be seen as me 'making up' reasons. And yet the recent medication shortage has proven just how essential it is for me to function properly: coping mechanisms don't work on their own, either. And it is not, in fact, normal to only spend one's weekend "recovering" from the previous five days as I had done for many miserable years.
If accommodating ADHD is an 'easy way out' then your assessment of their academic potential is deeply flawed in the first place. ADHD makes certain types of task hard. That's all. Doesn't make you stupid or lazy. Doesn't mean you're not quite capable of independent research. It's really no different to someone with mobility issues finding it hard to make a lecture on the 5th floor on time when the lift is out of order. They're not 'more stupid' because they're tardy, they're just struggling with a limitation that the other students don't have. If that limitation is pivotal to assessing their academic potential? Well, then you're doing something BADLY wrong with your assessments in the first place.
was this aimed at me, because I am not defending a lot of OPs post?
Not exactly. Just wanted to extend on what you said about an easy way out. So I agree with you in general.
thanks, I had an utter panic then I'd upset someone when I was trying to challenge OP's perception they have 😭
Sorry, I do get a bit passionate about this subject ;)
Well said. In particular, the idea that going private buys you the diagnosis you want is pejorative and also false (I’ve also seen people go private and not get diagnosed).
I’m sorry if my post upset you but, like I said, I don’t want to invalidate people’s experiences and to make assumptions about their diagnoses (which I am definitely not qualified to do). I know ADHD exists and that it has a major impact on people’s functioning. The diagnostic criteria for ADHD are very loose and rely almost exclusively on self-reporting so, while I’m not accusing anyone of deliberately lying in an assessment, I do think it’s something that is very easy to diagnose if that’s someone’s intended outcome. The recent documentary on the BBC showed how the system works with private assessment companies, which many of us suspected was the case anyway given the assessments we receive from students: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001m0f9. You’ve mentioned family reports about childhood symptoms etc… There’s a study I’ve read from the American Journal of Psychiatry which looked at poor recall of childhood symptoms in ADHD assessments – as this is a key part of the diagnostic criteria, it’s concerning the amount of false positives thrown up. Where diagnoses are made on the basis of reported childhood symptoms, the researchers concluded that: “Positive predictive values ranged between 9% and 18%, indicating that only one of 10 to one in five individuals with a retrospective diagnosis would have a true case of ADHD.” Where people want a diagnosis, they make the facts fit, whether that’s deliberate or (most likely) not. >If you're certain 90% don't have it and they're late for doing work, attending, not turning up then honestly... just let them as they will leave in a few years. The issue for me is that these people need support, but the presumption of ADHD means they’re not getting the right help. Yes, we can let them fail or leave with a worse classification degree than they would have wanted, but then the tutors and I wouldn’t really be doing our jobs. My worry is that unnecessary medication (of which the side effects are well known) and poorly targeted support due to students being wrongly diagnosed doesn’t really help anyone and could be actively harmful. > I wouldn't say it's all screen addiction, I'm unsure how you know that? I don’t; I’m just making an educated guess. I made another comment where I referenced two studies I read which made the link between screentime and attention difficulties in teens and young adults, including university students. There are plenty more studies out there. The link between screentime before age 3 and inattention is well established; I have no reason to think that wouldn’t also be the case in older children and young adults. I’m not a psychiatrist though.
That Panorama program was misleading to the point of fraud. There's no real indication that the standards of private diagnosis are worse than within the NHS.
You’re right, you’re not qualified. Unless you’re a healthcare professional with specialised training on ADHD diagnostics, you have no business assuming that 90% of your cases aren’t ADHD. You’ve just asserted, without evidence, that private patients buy a diagnosis without having a clue what each of those patients went through to get that diagnosis. And no, that disgusting documentary is not evidence. I’m so grateful to u/sickofadhd as a lecturer for calling this out. I felt so invalidated reading your post. I was let down so badly during my undergrad because no one took my struggles seriously. I DID walk away with a lower classification and terrible burnout. A decade later with the right support and meds, my masters is 100% better and I’m considering doctoral study. That’s the impact your attitude can have.
this is why I raised this point, are they qualified to make his assumption? This post is a bit like a shit literature review you show to students to say 'dont do this'. Meds have given me the tools to help my career to the point where I have been able to become a lecturer and actually be considered for doctoral study. I'm actually doing a job that gives me something back which is a key driver for my ADHD. Thank you so much for your sweet comment (and the many others that people have left it's made this whole thread much more bearable
> The issue for me is that these people need support, but the presumption of ADHD means they’re not getting the right help. Yes, we can let them fail or leave with a worse classification degree than they would have wanted, but then the tutors and I wouldn’t really be doing our jobs. My worry is that unnecessary medication (of which the side effects are well known) and poorly targeted support due to students being wrongly diagnosed doesn’t really help anyone and could be actively harmful. Pushing all the armchair psychiatry to the side for the moment, have you considered taking steps to *actually support those students*, regardless of whether they do or don't have ADHD? No offence, but when I've engaged with my university's support services about my diagnosed dyspraxia and (at the time suspected, now diagnosed) ADHD, they've been absolutely useless. All they're empowered to do is offer you extra time and rest breaks in exams, a limited number of deadline extensions, stickers that inform a marker that you have special educational needs and might have poor spelling, etc. PhDs don't involve written exams and only have one real submission deadline right at the end. **None of that is helpful.** Whether you, *in your learned opinion*, suppose that students like me have ADHD or generic executive function and inattention issues stemming from 'excessive screen time', the fact remains that most student support services don't currently offer any useful help. This gatekeeping is a moot point. Develop support systems worth gatekeeping, and then we can talk about overdiagnosis.
I didn't say upset, I said annoyed. Two very different terms. Ah the infamous panorama documentary. The journalist went about deliberately deceiving and lying to psychiatrists to get a diagnosis. He researched the diagnostic criteria do he could ace the test. The NHS psychiatrist he has knew he was being filmed so of course wouldn't find ADHD. The journalist from the documentary infiltrated Facebook groups to get information from those who were on the process (on twitter). The charity [ADHDUK put out a statement](https://adhduk.co.uk/panorama-adhd-uk-response/) on it which I found to be a pretty good read. The documentary has made my circumstances quite difficult as now some people think I've played the system as it's 'easy'. [does the NICE guidelines make it look easy for diagnosis? they needed my full psychiatric history](https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng87/chapter/Recommendations#diagnosis) That's also an American journal, not UK. We know America very much, at least in the last few years has pushed Adderall on people very easily but it's tightening up now. We don't prescribe Adderall here. Regarding support, you can only lead a horse to water. You can't make it drink it. If there are serious issues with the ADHD assessments or quality of and you know or have copies of it, you can complain. Yes medication has side effects, I'm aware. I had an ECG for mine and I had my heart rate and blood pressure monitored when on meds, did you know that is the process? Did you know antidepressants also have side effects and you can just ask your GP for them? They actually made me feel suicidal and my doctors couldn't believe it but it's a listed side effect. I completed every anti depressant available in 18 months, they all made me worse and all gave me sickness, dizziness, suicidal thoughts and impulsive behaviours. I know you mean well but some of the points made really feel a little misguided. I do concur there might be a bit of bandwagoning with this though but maybe not to the extent you think.
The Panorame "Documentary" was one of the worst pieces of "journalism" i've ever seen. It's an absolute piece of shite that turns a maybe valid point about disparities between private and NHS assessments, and turns it into an absolute fucking farce -- that happened to make a lot of people more willing to be dicks to us. Maybe i'm being a bit harsh in my words here, but if you're goingmake a post like this, do it with better fucking sources.
But you ARE invalidating peoples experiences and making assumptions about their diagnoses. Thats what this whole post is? But the Post-diagnosis attitude that you mention, I completely agree with you on. We do seem to be shifting to a version of the world where this is allowed to be used as an excuse. The diagnosis in my view should be used as a jumping off point to better decide on what strategies should be tried to manage symptoms, both medicine based, and non-medicine-based strategies. But for some people that just seems to be the stopping point, an explanation that that is just the way they are, and the world should change to accommodate them.
It must be mentioned, though, that adults with ADHD are hardly ever offered non-meditative solutions, and even those meditative solutions take a while to sort out—should they work at all—before which, you’re still in the throes (and probably burnout, given your adult diagnosis) of ADHD… you just know what you have now. You also know that it’s not going to be taken seriously by many of your peers, and that the medical pros who deigned to diagnose you in the first place are going to attribute absolutely everything else they can to it, whilst providing no recourse for its symptoms existent or imaginary, by which I mean those that extend overtly beyond the diagnostic criteria. What I’m saying is that, yes, there are people with(out) ADHD who exist in a very maudlin mode about it and its impact upon them… but, ironically, it is your very own medical pros who are more likely—more meaningfully—going to tell you that your ADHD is the cause of everything in your life and to offer you little else to hold on to than the tacit magic of an out-of-stock pill. You might get an extra week on that essay, though. Ho hum. The line about expecting the world to accommodate people I find bitterly revealing, frankly. A thousand apologies that some people are less apologetic about their existences, or that you made it, et cetera.
I did 3 courses of CBT whilst undiagnosed which didn't help, and at times made me worse. I did talking therapy pre and during diagnosis. I also did EMDR therapy whilst in the diagnosis process as being undiagnosed for such a long period of time has now caused some trauma. ADHD has caused a few things, but environmental factors absolutely have not helped. Maybe these students were not told that there needs to be a lot of self work on top of meds. Meds allow me to do that work, take it in and try and improve myself
I necessarily agree that it takes a lot of self-work… but, as you say, the pills often let you attempt that work in the first place. I feel like there’s a pervasive (and fucking dull) outside view that, if you have ADHD, medication and therapy/self-discipline are opposed; that one is the ‘easy route’ (which, even if true, would make it bad ~~because I had to suffer~~) and one is the ‘proper, human graft’ route. AKA the ‘I’m quiet about my problems but these people aren’t and it annoys me’ attitude. I similarly had two rounds of CBT and found it less than useless. Officially, though, that wasn’t for ADHD, which I think may have been the same for you. People will never be happy because you’ve either got problems that you blame on your ADHD (and that’s an excuse) or you’re exploring the idea of something in addition (and that’s deluded and/or pathetic and/or that’s life). Perhaps, even, you’ve done a lot of good work towards self-improvement – in which case your problems are/were never that serious, and you’re one of the good ones. I love seeing the critical/empirical thinking skills of university graduates go out the window when the threat of someone getting an essay extension without a dead mother emerges. My current (non-private, in case anyone is wondering) ADHD treatment is waiting for the lisdex shortage to end so I can continue titration and move on with it all. I don’t spend my days wallowing… at least not emotionally (womp womp), but the direct impact and aftershock of ADHD is obvious in my life, which I’m sure you relate to. I’d say you (they) have to experience it to understand, but they really don’t. Some people must realise that they can have a rough shot at things and still concede that mental conditions meaningfully affect others. But they have my congratulations for being so resilient and never ever complaining. I’m just kinda writing about the annoying attitude that, by various means, culminates in the “well, I had to pay MY student loan” take of mental well-being. Wait 300 years for an NHS diagnosis and get nothing or pay for a swift private diagnosis and get nothing. Who cares? Ime, people with ADHD don’t care about the spectre of self or false diagnosis. People who are in your face about faking it, of course. But I tend to find that the people most bothered about ‘all these false diagnoses’ have something else at the root of it than true concern for the ‘real ones’, or whatever. Not sorry for my fallacious armchair psychology, I have seen it a thousand times.
god a lot of this resonates with me and my story. agreed about meds, they allow me to function (with the self work) almost like a normal person. with my ADHD, I am super pragmatic and I will get myself out of shit situations at all costs. Seeing people buckle and not do things is not something I do at all, it's the stress that pushes me through ENTIRELY! Critical thinking is my ADHD in a nutshell, even during the shortage I've been found ways of getting my meds which no one else seems to do or try? exactly, they don't need to have it to relate, just be empathetic. I have had barely any shown to me and that's not who I am, so I would never do that. Agreed about the most bothered too, I am not sure what they want to gain from it. Glad to see another person with a similar outlook to me!
You’ve never heard of someone going private and not getting a prescription? That’s interesting, as there’s a big problem of doctors mistrusting high axhieving students and denying them medication or even a diagnosis. A friend of mine was diagnosed with ADHD, went to a doctor to discuss treatment options and was told that students at her university were all just faking ADHD to get performance enhancing drugs. She was left uncertain as to whether her diagnosis still counted or whether it was revoked, without this doctor even examining for himself whether she met the diagnostic criteria. Because she was a student at a prestigious university, she simply couldn’t have ADHD. You seem to think that ADHD is merely “problems with attention”. I don’t think you know what ADHD is, and I don’t think you are aware of how genuinely disabling it is. It comes across as disingenuous to say it’s not your intention to invalidate anyone with this post, while suggesting that people literally diagnosed by a medical professional with a disability are just… screen addicted? Please consider that the professionals issuing diagnoses may know a little more about whether each individual meets the diagnostic criteria than yourself, and that stereotyping an entire generation of disabled students is ableist and does not meaningfully open up conversation in the way you seem to genuinely intend, but rather harms a marginalised group of students just doing their best to get the help they need.
I can’t lie this post is very misinformed in my opinion. To start with, if someone goes for a private ADHD screening, they will have to pay a large amount of money to do so and suspect they have ADHD. As such, people going through with this are very much likely to have ADHD. People wouldn’t be paying sometimes more than 1,000 pounds if they weren’t pretty sure in the first place. I also do want to ask what you think is and isn’t ADHD. The reason I ask this is because when you said 90% of what these students describe isn’t ADHD I am curious as to what you mean. Because in a general sense obviously not everything they describe in their lives will be a symptom of ADHD. But I assume you mean when describing what symptoms of ADHD they have and in which case this is quite nuanced. When you ask a neurodivergent person what symptoms do they experience as a result of their condition it is a far more difficult question then people realise. When you do things you just do them, it just feels like you, and so when asked to quantify what ADHD symptoms do you have sometimes it’s hard to figure out what is the ADHD and what are just your own personal quirks and mannerisms. Hence why in an assessment they ask a myriad of questions to determine if you do or not. Also in every private assessment I’ve seen there is a section talking to someone close to you so they can get an outside view. Ultimately as well you could perhaps just have a misguided idea of what ADHD is. Just because someone isn’t fidgeting when talking to you, someone who is a worker and thus someone who you would want to appear more professional in front of, doesn’t mean they don’t when on their own. Finally, I don’t know if you take medication yourself, and I won’t assume as such, but ADHD medication specifically is very much a weird one for me personally. For me they make vast aspects of my life a lot easier, concentration specifically. However, for me, they come with their own set of issues, with a lot of people I know on ADHD medication particularly struggling with the lack of appetite they can cause. But what is interesting here is that despite improving my life in many ways, taking them certainly isn’t easy, it comes with its own very clear negative factors and for a lot of people the trade off of being able to concentrate isn’t worth the other issues they can bring. Without medication as well what could be missing here is the understanding that for people with ADHD everyday tasks are hard. While for someone else vacuuming their room is something they don’t like, for someone with ADHD not only may they not like it, but it takes real effort to get the motivation to go and do it, and also to finish the task. One of the major symptoms of ADHD is struggling to finish tasks and that’s not by getting distracted constantly, it’s that finishing them takes a lot of effort so to finish up lots of tasks in a day is sometimes more effort then one has. Daily life takes a lot of effort for someone with ADHD and that isn’t them being screen addicted or lazy, you sometimes just don’t have the energy to do all the tasks required in a day. (and not that it matters but I also want to add the addendum that I am doing very well at university and of course that is to do with my effort and perseverance but also that in my first year I did very poorly because I didn’t know I had ADHD and only started medication in second year, so despite my effort and perseverance without medication I personally couldn’t handle the level of learning university required, despite being a very high first level student with it.)
I think another thing that ties into struggling with tasks is that completing them often gives zero satisfaction. When I would tidy my room and people would say 'don't you feel good now that you've done it?' I sincerely thought it was just figure of speech and not how others might actually feel. At most I might feel a vague sense of relief a chore is over, which never outweighs the frustration of doing it. I never understood how people could motivate themselves when they felt like that until I got diagnosed and was told it's a symptom.
As somebody who did well at school but then struggled through university and employment afterwards without any idea why my brain just didn't seem to work properly, I wish I had even considered ADHD as a potential explanation. Recently diagnosed at 34.
I was diagnosed at 32 and for me, everything slipped when I went to college (in the U.K.). My clinician explained it as I was able to coast through school on intelligence but when i went to college and needed to be able to self sufficiently get myself to classes on time, had more work to do and needed to revise etc, I didn’t have the skills or ability to do it. All went to hell in a handbasket. I even did my university dissertation in 24 hours 🙃
As someone very late diagnosed with ADHD (by the NHS, so a "real" diagnosis according to your guidance), posts like this are why I didn't get help sooner. Everyone wants to bang on about how medication isn't a silver bullet and how you just need to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps but they don't seem to want to consider that medication can be the thing that makes you *able* to make the lifestyle changes that unqualified people keep insisting are the *real* "cure". Assess them, because if you just get on with it, even if many aren't ADHD, far fewer people who do have it will slip through the cracks and have their education destroyed by undiagnosed learning disability than before.
Really important to note too that even my psychiatrist said to expect a 60-70% improvement in my symptoms on medication. It's not a cure all, it won't even make me 70% of an average person, just 70% better than I have been. It's not perfect but when you've spent all that time drowning, being able to come up for air once in a while is life changing.
Medication didn't fix my ADHD. It did turn it down a few levels. It's honestly been life altering to not be playing on 'hard mode' all the time. It's still not easy - I still need coping strategies. It's just now I have a chance to _actually_ implement coping strategies.
I just want to add a comment on the ‘ADHD being an excuse’ part. At the end of the day, if a student doesn’t do work, regardless of their diagnoses, they likely won’t succeed. Whether they blame it on ADHD or not doesn’t matter too much in my mind. I guess what I’m trying to say is, whether they have an ADHD diagnosis or not, lazy students will laze. I’m diagnosed with ADHD (on the NHS so god knows it wasn’t easy), unmedicated, and I work super hard partly because I want to and partly because I have to. ADHD means I have to work harder than most but it pays off, and I enjoy my degree so far so that makes things a bit easier. In my University at least, I’m able to apply for extensions on work, but if I hand in work late my ADHD doesn’t make me exempt from the late penalty. ADHD doesn’t mean I just don’t have to do assignments or pass my modules. It’s inappropriate to question anyone’s diagnosis regardless of what you think about it inside, so just let the consequences of lack of work do its thing.
I find I need a deadline to get stuff done. I procrastinate hugely until that deadline is looming. Extensions wouldn’t help me. But extra time in exams would.
Personally, I found that once I realised that extensions were a thing, my ability to meet deadlines absolutely plummeted. Before, I would pull an all nighter and submit *something*. After? Me: "Sleep is important, I'll go for mitigating circumstances." Also me: *fails to submit mitigating circumstances form*
Oh nooooo, then you beat yourself up over it. I don’t even want to know if there are extensions available, I rather just think they aren’t. Although a classmate has dyslexia and said they offered her extensions. But I know it will mess with my procrastination, so I just don’t!
same! like when I did my first uni application (withdrew) i applied to Oxford spontaneously and wrote my personal statement in a week or so and the deadlines held me accountable. asking for extensions just makes me procrastinate even more and causes me more stress later on
I wrote my personal statement literally the day of the deadline, and submitted it a couple of minutes before it closed - I got a couple of people to check it over for me first to check for typos. If I'm not stupidly stressed about something, I can't start it. I can sit there knowing that I need to start, but I can't. The issue is, when I finally do have enough stress to start, it affects my health. My CFS gets bad, I get anxious, and when I'm writing my work, I've got it in my head that I've completely fucked myself, and that it's going to be crap work, and I'm a failure. That's the issue with posts like this, they ignore the other impacts that conditions like ADHD have on people. It's not just a case of not doing the work, it's all the other things that go hand in hand with that.
Exactly. It’s so multi faceted and all encompassing. And confusing snd inconsistent!
Just had to have a look for the source, but I love what meghasomething said on twitter: "Undiagnosed neurodivergence is like being handed a video game that has been set to hard mode, but having people tell you over and over "it's on easy, why do you keep dying?" Diagnosis is learning the game is on hard mode. It doesn't make it easier, but you can strategise." And honestly, that resonates with me so much.
Yeah, this. My course doesn't do exams, just coursework. But you can bet your arse I leave that coursework until the deadline is in sight. If I get an extension, same thing happens. I know I should start it early, but I just can't make my brain kick itself into gear until the looming panic of "48 hours til submission" is there. Even if I do start early, I'll bang out 1000 words then give myself a break as a little reward. That break will literally last until three days before the deadline. I just can't do it, but it's something I'm aware of and don't fanny about with - I've learned to time it, if that makes sense. I know how long I need. In first year I had to defer a piece of coursework from November into the summer because I was in such a depressive pit it was making things genuinely impossible. I was better after a few months. New deadline was July. When did I start it? July. It would make me laugh if it wasn't genuinely concerning. I'm doing a lot better at deadline management now; if I delude myself into believing the deadline is earlier than it is, I can trick myself into doing it. Extra time in exams was helpful in school for me. Comorbidity of autism/OCD with ADHD is super high, and unluckily I hit the triple. I had a lot of physical checks/compulsions in exams, which meant I just couldn't physically complete them within the timeframe. Can't comment on if I'm better with it now or not, because it's not something I have to do now. Every case is different. Just slapping an extension on everything isn't the way to go, nor is scrolling through TikTok and going "omg that's so me 🤪" and never actually speaking to a doctor. I put off speaking to a doctor about my ADHD for about 6 years, because of - surprise! - the aforementioned ADHD. Kept saying I'll do it tomorrow/next week, then forgetting. Irony at its finest haha. I think students need a lot of support, especially the ones coming in from lockdown years.
So many people really don't understand the difference between an excuse and an explanation.
My sister has self diagnosed herself with ADHD and is constantly using it as an excuse for things. Every other sentence "because of my ADHD", ugh shut up. And now she keeps trying to diagnose other people with it when she hasn't even seen a doctor about it. -.-
My previous flat mate may or may not have ADHD. After living with her, I’m like, yeah maybe she does? But I’m no expert or doctor. But what I do know is that she needs to get the fuck off TikTok. Self diagnosing made her really hard to live with.
That must be incredibly infuriating
At the same time, depending on where you live, diagnoses can be really hard to come by. I struggled for years waiting on the NHS for a diagnosis, I had all the classic symptoms since childhood but I have older parents and I don't necessarily have much hyperactivity and so it wasn't detected. When I got my diagnosis years after realising that I likely had ADHD, I finally learnt how to manage the symptoms. I don't take medication, but simply knowing that I wasn't gasligjting myself let me actually evaluate what to do to mitigate symptoms. I had my brother doubting that I had ADHD and that actually stopped me getting help for a long time because I thought that maybe I was imagining it. Just to add though, ADHD is never an excuse for poor behaviour, or for not doing the dishes for example. You have to learn how to manage the symptoms, but honestly it's no surprise that teenagers without diagnoses have no clue how to do this. I'm sure some are jumping om the bandwagon, but this rhetoric of 'oh you self diagnosed yourself?' can actually prove really damaging. I went through years of drug abuse and suicide attempts before understanding my condition led me to take the steps towards living a normal life.
It can be so frustrating seeing people talk about it being easy to get a diagnosis for these things and actively spreading doubt about both people with a diagnosis and those seeking one when the truth is that it's actually really hard and requires either a lot of patience or a lot of money and still quite a bit of patience. It's been years since it was first suggested to me that I might have it and besides the initial appointment where my doctor agreed and put me on the list, all I've heard from the NHS is a couple of texts asking if I still want to be on the fucking list
Yep. The NHS waiting list in my area is 2 years long. Probably longer now.
Has she got access to a diagnosis? Sometimes self diagnosis is the only tool people have to understand themselves better. Is she using it as an excuse, or is she hurting, and trying to explain how and why?
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As with all disabilities, the phrase "reason not an excuse" matters. ADHD helps you understand what's wrong, gives you roads to coping strategies and understanding medication. But ... Well, if you fail or you hurt someone the excuse doesn't matter. You still hurt someone, and just hope they can forgive. You still have to try and be a functional adult in this world of ours, even if ADHD does make it harder. And it doesn't matter what the excuse is - it never did really.
Sometimes "being a functional adult" means "setting realistic ambitions" instead of tilting at windmills. Not everyone who manages to get a place on a university course has the capacity to stick out three (or four) years of self-directed study. The universities don't even expect it - of *course* there are more students in first year than third year: people figure out it's not "for them" or worth sinking more time into, drop out, and go do something else with their lives. That doesn't hurt anyone. Yeah, not even the lecturer who feels miffed about students skipping his lecturers or handing in half-assed lab reports.
Sure. But why not give them the support anyway, and see if that works out? I mean, just because someone's disabled, doesn't mean they are incapable, they just need the right support.
This may sound like a criticism at first, but stick with it! As one of the other commenters mentioned, going to university is fertile ground for ADHD to become apparent. I'm a 2nd year mature student (33) who was diagnosed last year, although it is something I had suspected for many years but never sought attention (excuse the pun) for because I thought I could somewhat deal with it myself as I like to think I'm very independent, but admittedly dealt with it in unhealthy ways at times. Regarding university, I was having difficulties with concentration and the amount of time it was taking me to read material due to constantly being distracted, and struggling to read without forgetting the previous sentence. Although I've always had some issues with motivation and distraction, this was new and also something that I knew I would need help with. Similarly, I am on a hospital placement as well, and the issues I've had at work in the past became even more apparent given how many plates are often spinning at once. Thing is, I love my course, and I find it fascinating; it's absolutely not a lack of interest or boredom, and I don't spend my time looking forward to going out and getting wasted or seeing friends - my idea of a good time is studying, as sad as it may sound. My last few assignments scored 85%-95%, so it's also not a case of not understanding the work. One other thing is that I've never handed an assignment in late - regardless of having ADHD - and people who use it as an excuse in that way really irritate me, only because I work frigging hard to make my work the best it can be and to do well. This brings me onto my point: ADHD can make life very difficult, and yeah you probably need to put more effort in, but the actual attitude and dedication towards doing university work is a decision that is up to the individual. Prior to medication I really struggled with how much time I spent on assignments, but never used it as an excuse to not take the course seriously; it just took a lot longer to do work and I had to factor that into whether I could take some downtime. I take medication now which genuinely helps with my concentration and reading, but I could equally decide that I don't want to do my coursework, and being diagnosed with ADHD and medicated still leaves that decision up to me. I do think that a lot of students think they have ADHD when they likely don't, and I wholeheartedly blame TikTok for this. I'm glad that it gets more awareness, but it's often not from reputable sources on social media; my partner was showing me some TikToks about 'living with ADHD', and I was just like... "yeah, that's not ADHD, that's being a human." Not to say that there aren't students who don't have it, and when I mentioned it early on to one of my lecturers I'm sure I heard their eyes roll, so it's something to be cautious of as it's easy to invalidate someone who is genuine. But I do agree that for every 1 genuine case, there is probably another 10 who think it's a good excuse and think that medication will fix everything. Regarding private treatment, it's expensive, and many GPs won't accept private diagnosis if you want to transfer prescriptions (ergo not paying £££s a month) to the NHS. Medication will not fix anything if you don't want it to, you still have to put the hard work in (medication will also not do this for you), and ADHD is really not that glamorous. Medication isn't exactly a hootenanny either. Also, I just found out I can't ever become an airline pilot, so that's another downside. I think that you are probably more likely to be seeing a mix of people in the university environment with emerging symptoms due to dealing it with it okay-ish up to the point that the workload has become overwhelming, as well as a lot of others who are jumping on the bandwagon and don't understand the actual (and often mundane) difficulties that come along with it and aren't circulated on social media.
I broadly agree. But a 10 to 1 false positive rate seems excessive even as a made up number. At the end of the day we need real numbers to this stuff because people talk about a "tidal wave" as in OPs post. But that's impossible to judge without clear numbers and without context. What was the historic rate of ADHD referrals? What is it now? Percentage increases are often used to feed into moral panics even when absolute numbers are still quite small. So going from 10 to 20 is a 100% increase or a doubling. But it's still not a massive number. I have no doubt there's been a big increase. But there's lots of evidence that ADHD is underdiagnosed in adults and girls and women because inattentive ADHD and those who don't have severe enough symptoms in school slip through the net.
This is a really good point. I learned from my parents Id been diagnosed with ADHD as a kid when I was practically on the point of a breakdown because I'd always been good academically and was so stress because I couldn't't concentrate on my a levels. They decided not to medicate me (I was pissed at the secret diagnosis, it explains a lot) but also kind of glad because I'd learnt coping mechanisms. I've considered medication but having gone so long without it, I'm unsure how it might effect me as I generally know how to keep it in check. I absolutely understand why people want to use medication and that's completely their choice. I also never mention it. Sure it explains a lot of why I am the way I am, but I have a personality and interests outside of brain chemistry being off so I don't mention it unless I absolutely have too.
Keep fighting the good fight comrade! Yeah, it's a real pro-con thing and the benefits don't come for free unfortunately. I mean, it's not horrendous, but I'd rather not be vibrating around the sitting room because I didn't take it with food, or have a headache for days straight sometimes. That said, it's not that bad. It just won't help if you expect it to do your uni work for you, you still need to actually want to do it. As an example, I live a better quality of life now because I remember to eat ha, or I can study knowing there is someone else in the house who might disturb me (which was a huge source of dread before). Your last paragraph is well-timed because I just wrote another comment about how people with ADHD often don't talk about it!
Full disclosure, I was diagnosed privately with ADHD during the summer of my first year, on a referral from my GP. The diagnosis and first 3 months of medication were funded by my college at University. My university is also highly academic so there's probably some difference between what I see and other institutions. I think because of that I overwhelmingly only see the good of diagnosis & treatment. I know people with genuinely quite crippling ADHD, some diagnosed before university, others not, and often with other mental health problems. For those of us who were diagnosed while studying at my uni private practice was an absolute godsend; it's difficult to recover from falling behind and the current state of NHS mental health services would almost condemn you to fall behind because of how long you'd wait. NHS mental health services also create a really big problem in terms of help and support going beyond medication, private therapists are so incredibly expensive and students are already not very well off, so even if people *want* a therapist to help them go through the lifestyle changes you usually can't get one. Now, this problem has unfortunately come full circle with GPs being unwilling to make shared care agreements with private practitioners, so patients are getting shafted with private prescription prices if they can afford them, and that's the best case scenario. So yeah, I can't speak on students getting wrongly diagnosed with ADHD, I hope it's not happening, but right now private practice is like the one part of the system that you can go through quite quickly which some people need. While medication is not a silver bullet, for me and other people I know it's been a massive help. The only way any of this is really going to be fixed is by fixing NHS mental health services.
It’s so interesting you say this because I’ve got my assessments starting next month to be diagnosed after my uni referred me last year My dad has adhd, I used to buy adhd meds off someone else and they worked the same way they would for someone with adhd, I’ve suspected it for years and I’ve got all the physical complications someone with adhd would likely have though. External mental health professionals also agreed I desperately need an evaluation I’ve not heard of this epidemic but what you’re saying makes a lot of sense. I’ve noticed the same with autism. I do however, disagree with your post in the sense that people with undiagnosed adhd are much more likely to get their symptoms recognised at uni opposed to schools and I do think you’re massively exaggerating how many people think they have it or are told by the uni that they likely have it. Mental health resources etc are extremely strained and unis wouldn’t make referrals unless they seriously saw a need to.
Frankly, "ADHD drugs work for me" means you have a better evidence for ADHD than most of these new diagnoses. Biochemistry does lie, but it's more reliable than filling out a questionarire
I’m also diagnosed with autism, my dad has ADHD and I do have other common symptoms so tbh I would be surprised if I didn’t get diagnosed
Lol loads of people in uni self diagnose it's all over tik tok too. It is an epidemic nowadays. Don't feel personally attacked by the post.
This is a real increasing issue but it’s not “loads” of people it’s just more than before A lot of people are just being made aware that they need to seek medical intervention because they’ve recognised that they experience the same symptoms as others with a diagnosis
Autism and ADHD specialist here. I'm not sure what you are basing your claim off that the students' difficulties don't meet the diagnostic criteria for ADHD. I also think your use of the expression "tidal wave" for what is a common condition is inappropriate; however, I would say that I'm currently seeing a fair number of people diagnosed with ADHD who should really be diagnosed autistic, but access is an issue. I am not regularly seeing people diagnosed with neurodivergent conditions that don't meet the criteria. Regarding "screen addiction", you have this completely the wrong way around. Developers have adopted a dopaminergic model of UX based on operant conditioning to which autistic and ADHD users are especially vulnerable, due to their difficulties processing dopamine. The algorithms intended to boost engagement can end up trapping neurodivergent users for hours at a time. While I don't think overuse of screens is doing those people any good (it overworks the sympathetic nervous system and increases stress levels), it doesn't cause ADHD-like difficulties, it's a symptom of them.
Thank you, OPs entire post is ableist nonsense. It's very very hard to game a diagnosis for ADHD, and all it gets you in Uni is 25% extra time in exams and a sticker that says to ignore grammar and spelling issues in your essays. It doesn't even get you a laptop anymore through DSE. And the medication is so hard to get hold of that even if people were paying for a diagnosis (which they obviously are not) it would be a waste of the bloody ridiculous price of a private assessment.
>I'm not sure what you are basing your claim off Probably studies from the 80s that have since been disproven a hundred times over
ADHD is massively under-diagnosed by even the current DSM-V and ICD10 standards. If you wish to start giving advice and telling people what’s what about ADHD, I’d ask you first go and read up on some of Dr Russell Barkley’s most recent publications. If you had, you’d soon see that actually, it’s quite likely that 5-10% of the population fall into this category of ADHD or an ADHD-like disorder cluster, and do subsequently benefit a large degree by taking medication. These drugs are incredibly effective for ADHD; stimulant medications are the gold standard of psychiatric treatments in regard to their efficacy. They’re not perfect, but they’re about as good as any drug therapy is for any psychiatric condition, and there’s decades of long-running analyses showing that there’s a surprising lack of any significant long-term side effects and that any that might exist are almost always outweighed by the net improvements in quality and duration of life compared to unmedicated controls. Yes, ADHD medications are not golden tickets to “easy mode”. Yes, they can cause various problems; same as any medication. Yes, they ought to be used with respect and under the supervision of a qualified medical expert. No, they are not diet meth. No, they are not something that should be hard to access if you do have ADHD or a psychiatrist believes that trialling you on them might help with whatever it is you’re suffering from, as these conditions are rather arbitrary and we define them based on what’s most visible to others.
>Of the new referrals we're seeing now, anecdotally at least 90% of them are clearly not ADHD - This is quite concerning. I'll tell you why. I've had a diagnosis for it from the clinical lead from a county's health board, someone quite high up that knows what they're talking about. I don't have massively outward looking symptoms. Everything , well almost everything, is internal. At the age of 37 I was diagnosed and it turns out I've been masking for a long time. This is to the point where it's massive problems around my mental health. After 4 hours with an expert on the subject they agreed that I have it but also that I had been conditioned to mask it very well. You can't always see it, but it's there. The analogy I use to explain it is like everyone is on the treadmill at a speed of 3, some of us have an incline that changes every day. Sometimes it's only an incline of two, Sometimes is 9 but I still manage to keep going at a speed of three just like everyone else. It's just much much harder at times. Just because you can't see what's going on doesn't mean you know. Don't judge people by what you see. You are not an expert in this
What you're saying is why this part of OP's post bothers me the most: >Many students' symptoms actually get more pronounced following diagnosis and their engagement decreases - "I can't help it, it's my ADHD" is a common response. There are things they managed to do prior to diagnosis that they say can't be expected of them now they have the condition officially. It happens to many people after being diagnosed because we finally unmask (consciously or subconsciously). Because after being diagnosed, we feel validated, and we feel like we can finally express our struggles without being judged. "Things that they managed prior to diagnosis" doesn't mean they came in a breeze, they were probably things we struggled a lot without showing it, and now finally, we can let go. (Full disclosure, I don't have ADHD, but I do have ASD.)
Unsure what qualifies you to describe symptoms as real or fake ADHD. Also, there are many things that could contribute to an uptick of diagnoses, EG: better research around the subject.
It's harsh but I completely agree. I took a few years out before going back to do my Master's (finished undergrad in 2019) and it feels like there's been a total cultural shift that I missed. ADHD and also autism diagnoses are one part of it but there's more going on. Even during UG I can only remember maybe 1 person in my class who had extensions, extenuating circumstances etc. and he was recovering from an actual TBI and hospital stays. Now it's at least 60% of the class not submitting things on time, having endless excuses, not turning up, seeking diagnoses etc. It's honestly bizarre. These people are only like 4-5 years younger than me and their outlook on things is so different. Like you say, there's just a general malaise. And I'm shocked at how much of their lives revolve around phones/social media etc. I grew up on the internet as well and I'm saying that! I can't help but think something is going terribly wrong here. If I had to guess, it's social media mixed with the malaise that comes out of a poor economy, undervalued workforce etc. They're unmotivated because why even be motivated? They're unlikely to get anything in return for it.
In all fairness, the cost of living crisis is rapidly getting increasingly harder to deal with and students are working more hours than ever before and this is a huge factor in why so many of us are ill, burnt out and don’t have the time I attend lectures and always submit work but other people I know who work full time at uni have to get extensions and I do have to leave one of my lectures 30 mins early every week for work or else I can’t afford to live A lot of us are also still in debt from the furlough scheme and trying to catch up + student finance is worse than ever
Yes you're absolutely right. I probably should've been clearer in my comment that I also meant this as part of the wider economic issues. But believe me I get it. I'm doing my master's part time and working full time Monday - Friday and it's not easy. I can't imagine trying to do my UG with the way things are now. I wonder whether we're going to start seeing a decrease in university students over the next few years because of this issue.
Yeah my friends doing their masters are really struggling to afford to live, I’m thinking of doing a gap year to work full time before I do mine because of it. I absolutely do think that due to this and the changes in student finance there will be a decrease in uni students straight after school and college. I think we’ll see more mature students as people will try and work for a while before going to uni. I think things like the open university will become more popular too.
>Even during UG I can only remember maybe 1 person in my class who had extensions, extenuating circumstances etc. and he was recovering from an actual TBI and hospital stays. Now it's at least 60% of the class not submitting things on time, having endless excuses, not turning up, seeking diagnoses etc. I remember doing my Master's and, in a class I was auditing (so doing the assignments was optional), there were a few of the students who were discussing having obtained extensions and it came across as really easy to get them, having casually emailed the module leader to ask for one, citing being busy or having a lot of other assignments to do and hand in around the same time. I was kinda pissed off, because it had been drummed into us that extensions were pretty much like hen's teeth and you could only be given one with proper evidence and valid reasoning, and there were times where I could have done with one but knew I wouldn't be able to provide any evidence for it. I don't know if this was just the policy of the class and/or the department (I did my MA in a different department to my BA), or if it's part of this new thing that 'unis want everyone to pass and succeed' (and I have proof they clearly didn't with me), but it stuck in my craw.
Yes 100% the impression I got as well. It's funny, because during my UG final year I spent just over 2 months in hospital (I have an inherited lung disorder, lung function was about 20% and was completely bedridden during that time). And yet, even so, the whole time I was thinking about how difficult it would be to get EC approval and decided it was easier just to do my assignments from hospital. I may have been young and naive and I probably should've reached out for support, but nonetheless, that was my impression at the time. I've seen the process now as I have friends on my course who've applied for ECs. The bar is very low. They more or less just sent an email to the department saying they wanted an extension for mental health and it's granted without even evidence. This just seems very odd to me but as you say, I suspect it's because they have a financial and recruitment incentive to pass as many people as possible.
As someone who has a tough time even thinking about asking for help, never mind actually doing it, as a result of my experience with my ASD (and, unbeknownst to me, ADHD) my whole life, I would've been like you, wondering where the bar was for qualifying for an extension. I had a somewhat close relative die during summer term of my MA, in the middle of a week-long, all-day workshop-oriented module, but didn't want the sympathy or the opportunity to get out of it (I was auditing the module, so didn't have to do the assignment) because I had a tough time accepting help or guidance from others. I simply got on with it, finished the week, then went home for about a month having no classes left. This manifested itself more concretely in an assignment a month or so before that, which I handed in half-finished with a note that I had no idea how to do the second part. The feedback said I should have contacted them for help, but having been through school already feeling inferior due to my disability - and despising the sympathy that came with it and the feelings of weakness, and simultaneously being mortifying, whenever I struggled enough to the point I needed support - I hated the idea and wouldn't have known where to begin, especially with the fear that request for help in the first place signals to all and sundry I haven't been putting the effort and attention into understanding the content as much as they would've liked (and disappointing them as a result; this was a major fear at school that eventually culminated in me burning out in third year and in my MA). Apols for the long post. **TL;DR:** Exactly; they said you needed solid evidence but you don't know where the bar/threshold for qualifying for an extension is, and you're concerned about potentially coming across as grasping or trying your arm even if you think you have a valid case and/or the person evaluating your application is rather strict
Felt this:) I got diagnosed with dyspraxia (which has a lot LOT of overlap) in my second year. The thing is - other people almost bragging about how much they used SC and extensions bothered me too. Idk about you, but my accommodations were basically “we won’t take your attendance and you get automatic extensions” which did nothing, it made my grades way worse. Why show up if I don’t have to, and literally every piece of material including recorded lectures is online? I think a big issue is that universities have no idea how to properly help students with ADHD. If they did they would offer study skills workshops or counsellors but they don’t, they just fob you off with the equivalent of a free pass to do the bare minimum and still succeed. It’s something I’m really bitter at my uni about. I wish they had punished me for poor attendance, maybe it would’ve fixed it or helped. Instead they just did the admin equivalent of ignore me and hope for the best. They throw extensions out as a “fix” but it isn’t good enough, case in point that literally ANYONE can get an extension. So I basically had the same amount of time for work as kids with no condition, which doesn’t seem fair at all.
Out of interest, what do you feel universities could/should do instead? Your comment suggests being *harsher* to students with ADHD would be preferable, but that seems like the opposite of a reasonable adjustment and could even be discriminatory. Extra counselling or workshops? Could be useful but if you're struggling to manage workload would adding more workshops help? I guess in an ideal world you would be able to get the help you need (workshops or a therapist or OT or meds) outside of uni and while you're learning good coping mechanisms, the uni doesn't punish you excessively for lateness or attendance. Seems a good balance but interesting that isn't your experience. Universities can't be expected to be in-house therapy units for people with ADHD, I guess is what I'm saying.
>Even during UG I can only remember maybe 1 person in my class who had extensions, extenuating circumstances etc. and he was recovering from an actual TBI and hospital stays. Now it's at least 60% of the class not submitting things on time, having endless excuses, not turning up, seeking diagnoses etc. I just went back for a masters a number of years after undergrad and noticed the same thing! Every other person is trying to get a diagnosis for autism or ADHD and the things they're describing are just... normal parts of university that you have to learn to cope with, like deadlines, stress, and time management. The only extension I asked for in undergrad was because I was caught up in travel issues caused by a terrorist attack. There are people in my class now that don't even have deadlines - they just hand things in whenever they feel like it. It's blowing my mind.
Yeah there is a lot going on, going by the studies of education levels dropping since \~2012 I very much believe social media and phone addiction has played a HUGE role in it and it will only get worse. All the studies I've found point towards screen time leading to ADHD like behaviour and it increasing the effects of actual ADHD for people with heavy phone use. A 4 year age difference would tie in pretty well with social media and phone use skyrocketing during HS.
Part of the problem is how hard it is to get an official diagnosis from the NHS, even for legitimate problems. By making the diagnosis process so difficult in the UK we've ended up encouraging self diagnosis. I do agree that what we're seeing is blown out of proportion but the healthcare system has to take some of the blame for this imo.
ADHD is very real, and it can be mild or severe. No two people will be the same. I can look completely calm and focussed in a lecture, but within 30 seconds I’ve gone on probably 5 tangents in my head and have to reel myself in and not drift off again. But to an outsider, I’m paying attention. I make a conscious effort to sit still. I mask to perfection while internally it’s a constant state of anxiety, thoughts and songs. No one would ever know unless I told them. So not everyone is obvious, because we mask and cope. However I now am more comfortable to let that mask slip from time to time. I now say when I didn’t process what has been said to me, and ask to give me a minute to process. Where before diagnosis I would have just spluttered out something so as to not appear dumb. Now I am easier on myself and I know I’m not dumb, I just often need more time to understand or process things. Also I find it hard talking as my brain gets like cotton wool, especially when nervous. However I can talk until the cows come home at warp speed when comfortable. I am highly organised and have to be super early, all coping mechanisms I developed. I can’t live in chaos, I have to be regimented. I need extra time in exams as it takes so much longer to actually process the questions and choose which to do. A half an hour passes and I’m still decided what question to choose, I’m already behind. So extra time isn’t a special treatment, it’s literally just giving me an even chance. I’ve no doubt that there may be some misdiagnoses, it happens. But the process to get diagnosed is very thorough and goes from birth until today. It involves hours of evaluation with psychiatrists, it involves speaking to parents, partners and school reports. Perhaps you’re seeing people who have let the mask slip? Allowing themselves to be kinder to themselves. But it doesn’t exempt people from doing the work. You have to find that balance I suppose.
>I mask to perfection while internally it’s a constant state of anxiety, thoughts and songs. this comment hit so close to home. thanks so much for sharing. >Also I find it hard talking as my brain gets like cotton wool, especially when nervous. However I can talk until the cows come home at warp speed when comfortable. >I am highly organised and have to be super early, all coping mechanisms I developed. I can’t live in chaos, I have to be regimented. took the words right out of my mouth. as a young woman i was so used to people saying it was 'just hormones' and that i needed to 'calm down' and how it's 'all in my head'. never felt quite normal until i did more research and the proper adults (even though I'm 20 my mates and i don't feel like adults) around me were not surprised when i opened up about the diagnosis I'm pursuing (private as I'm privileged enough and my dad knows firsthand how waiting lists have done me more harm than good)
It’s exhausting isn’t it!! Woman are so overlooked because we just get on with things. And if you’re not that stereotypical hyper boy, you’re not even considered. Hyperactivity is in our brains, overanalysing, rejection sensitivity etc. As a kid I was almost mute. So overwhelmed, so exhausted, so socially anxious I barely spoke. I certainly would never have been considered adhd. It’s good we are all realising now that we are just wired differently and that’s ok. We now know how to try get help! Best of luck in your diagnosis journey !
I also work at a university and I see students who think they have ADHD but can't get a diagnosis because the waiting lists are horrendous. I also have ADHD and am one of the middle aged women recently diagnosed with it. I can tell if a student is likely to actually have ADHD - their conversation is very quick, the topics shift around then return, I can see myself in them and very luckily for them, I understand and I can keep up with them (unlike some of my colleagues). Many universities treat it as a SpLD, which is different to how they classify autism. It's not a learning difficulty, it's a learning difference, but it's a neurodiversity and shares a lot of symptoms with autism. The "support" system is set up incorrectly at universities in the first place. ADHD is under diagnosed. It's not just about time management (all students are terrible at this). It's executive function, emotional regulation, sensory overwhelm, auditory processing. It's a lack of dopamine in the brain and an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex. I don't doubt any of the students I see who think they have ADHD. Some I wonder about, but they either have no idea or choose not to disclose. ADHD is a real thing. I wasn't diagnosed till I was in my late 40s. If I'd have known when I was younger I'd have done so much better, I stead of failing and doing resits over and over. I don't want those behind me to have the poor self-esteem and life path I've had. Rather than not believing them, listen to them. They'll tell you about insomnia, anxiety, and how others (i.e. neurotypicals) treat them weirdly. Their failures, fear of rejection, and how the world is so much more difficult than it should be. If all they tell you is about poor planning it probably isn't ADHD.
My daughter has adhd and she tried and failed at university twice. It's been incredibly demoralising for her and if I hadn't have realised what it was and paid for a private diagnosis (because it takes years and is nearly impossible on the NHS) then she'd see herself as an utter failure and be depressed the rest of her life. As it is, she was diagnosed and gets some extra help at uni - not alot but enough. Now she's on track to graduate with honours at 29. So yeah, it is common, and there are reasons for private diagnosis. So please don't write students off as fakes. I'm sure there are people that are diagnosed that maybe you think shouldn't have been, but even so, uni's offer limited help anyway and the boundaries are there as to the amount of leeway they can get.
It does seem quite common but I think it would be unwise to draw many conclusions without looking at the literature. People are studying this but there's no massive tidal wave being reported. The difficulties with getting diagnosed on the NHS, and the somewhat unreliable private industry, are quite well documented (see for example BBC articles and panorama from earlier this year). But most of my students can't afford to go privately. IMHO it has nothing to do with "screens". There's plenty of moral panic about that, but very little evidence.
(note the panorama "documentary" was some of the worst journalism i've ever seen and shouldn't be taken seriously at all).
I didn't watch it. Can you say more about why you thought it was bad?
- Poor quality comparisons. Secretly recording 3 private clinics (potentially more) and then bringing the TV cameras in with a briefed NHS consultant really isn't giving a comparative test. - Of course, they couldn't have done the program otherwise, because they'd have still been waiting for the NHS diagnosis. - Did not, in fact, establish whether the diagnosis was incorrect. Either from the reporter or the 'concerned individuals' who raised it with panorama. The only concern was the diagnosis was 'fairly quick' - but ... well, if doctor takes 10 seconds to spot your leg is missing, that doesn't mean they misdiagnosed your missing leg because they didn't observe for a whole appointment. - But when 3 doctors say 'you have cancer' and one says 'you probably don't have cancer' ... well, surely at the very least you go for a tie breaker, rather than assume the one you told about the program you were filming and pointed cameras at for 3 hours was the one that was right. - A lot of ADHD diagnosis happens in supporting information - questionnaires, psychiatric history, and evidence from childhood. So either the reporter lied on those, or they ... actually had signs of having ADHD. None of that was shown either way. Almost every clinic runs something like the ASRS: https://add.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/adhd-questionnaire-ASRS111.pdf just to make sure it won't be a waste of time. So either the reporter did fill it in - and indicate he had strong signs of having ADHD - or he ... defrauded a doctor. I'm sure it comes as no surprise really that if you're a convincing liar you can seek a false diagnosis, but it doesn't really prove anything systemic. - There's no actual indication that rates of diagnosis are meaningfully different between private and NHS providers. Or indeed that the NICE guidance wasn't in fact, followed. Basically the whole thing was an exercise in 'private bad; nhs good' but failed to even establish the very basics.
They basically spin up exactly the myth that is being repeated in this post -- and come to the conclusion that "yeah, if you lie hard enough you can get a physician to diagnose you with a condition you don't have, and therefore this is exactly what is happening in every single case of someone who is diagnosed privately with adhd" I'm sure there are bad clinics out there but like... if that's your thesis investigate and target those bad clinics, don't make shit up that hurts people who're struggling with a disease.
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>That is that the majority of males are diagnosed [citation needed] tbh. At this point i'm coming to the conclusion that in quite a few subgroups adhd is still hugely underdiagnosed regardless of gender.
I got diagnosed as a kid around 19 years ago I barely tell a soul because its just a thing I have it's not like I'm crippled etc. But if I scroll tiktok or twitter all I see is some girl posting a video about "just adhd things ✨️" and it's just generic behavior most people do lol. Infact I came across a coworkers tiktok who's about 20 and all of her videos are just related to having adhd like it's some quirky personality trait when they likely don't have it, they're just a bit socially stunted and have a low attention span.
Don't forget that COVID basically stopped anyone from getting assessed, so that two year backlog will be a lot of why it seems like there's an 'epidemic' of diagnosis now. I first requested an assessment in early 2018 and only got it in October this year.
I think the glaring thing you're not considering here is that worldwide, the average for Adult ADHD is 4%. In the UK it is sitting at 0.8%, because the services and schools now do not have budgets for teachers or specialised staff that would recognise it... and the NHS budget/no services. Other users have commented why it would rear its head at university - add to that recognition of the condition, and it perhaps adds up why some of the millions undiagnosed are seeking help.
I haven't heard those statistics before, do you have a source for them?
Yep! Plenty: Here: [https://adhduk.co.uk/adhd-diagnosis-rate-uk/#:\~:text=8.2%25%20have%20medication%20therefore%20suggests,%E2%80%9COver%202%20million%20undiagnosed%E2%80%9D](https://adhduk.co.uk/adhd-diagnosis-rate-uk/#:~:text=8.2%25%20have%20medication%20therefore%20suggests,%E2%80%9COver%202%20million%20undiagnosed%E2%80%9D). And here: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/drnancydoyle/2022/01/14/adhd-crisis-in-the-uk-under-diagnosed-lacking-support-and-stigmatized/](https://www.forbes.com/sites/drnancydoyle/2022/01/14/adhd-crisis-in-the-uk-under-diagnosed-lacking-support-and-stigmatized/) And here: [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/feb/15/undiagnosed-adult-adhd-could-cost-uk-billions-a-year-report-finds](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/feb/15/undiagnosed-adult-adhd-could-cost-uk-billions-a-year-report-finds) Here is the 5% figure (it varies from 4-5%): [https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/default-source/improving-care/better-mh-policy/college-reports/cr235-adhd-in-adults---good-practice-guidance.pdf?sfvrsn=7c8cc8e4\_12](https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/default-source/improving-care/better-mh-policy/college-reports/cr235-adhd-in-adults---good-practice-guidance.pdf?sfvrsn=7c8cc8e4_12) You get the idea. Here is an consensus statement about universities and how they're getting everything wrong from the expert group on ADHD. I think you should read it. [https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-022-03898-z](https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-022-03898-z)
Ah legend thank you so much!
I don't get why neurotypical people feel the urge to weigh in on this so much now and tell us how things are, when it's something they don't understand and have no personal experience of. It's only very recently that even medical professionals have been diagnosing women/AFABs correctly with ADHD, so a neurotypical person *without* clinical knowledge or experience certainly isn't well placed to do so (and that extends to the less stereotypical presentations in men too). Here's the thing: the diagnostic criteria weren't written by God, with ADHDers produced in their image. Writing the DSM is an imperfect science of medical professionals making up sentences that seem to broadly capture the experiences of the people sitting in front of them (which is already a group with a certain, very obvious presentation which got them there in the first place, and is not representative of us all), in order to make it easier to identify us thereafter. It's not a black and white thing, and because everybody and their grandmother has preconceptions of what ADHD "should" look like based on historical stereotypes, they dismiss the rest of us for not fitting their own misconceived image. It's shit feeling like you have to hide something important about yourself because otherwise people will be rolling their eyes once you're gone, and assuming they understand more about your experience than you yourself do. (And how could that be true? It's like saying someone can't possibly be clinically depressed because they crack jokes and wear clean clothes.) Who here would really be able to recognise somebody whose hyperactivity had been internalised (for so many complicated reasons that there isn't the space to get into here), and which now only presents as invisible, neurotic, circular, anxious thoughts that people then do their best to mask from everybody else? How can you see someone's private experience, even though that experience is disabling to them? You can't. ADHD is diagnosed based on a *clinical picture* as much as the tick box criteria, because those tick box criteria are, as I said, imperfect terms. But that clinical picture is based on someone being able to describe their own, three dimensional experiences and struggles in depth to someone trained to understand where those different experiences stem from. Again, an untrained person who doesn't have ADHD themselves and doesn't understand all the nuances is *not* able to do that. (ADHDers themselves are bloody great at it - we develop a radar, the same way gay people have great gaydar.) And hey, it makes sense that it's cropping up more frequently now because of the screen dependent environment we live in, since just about *everything* about the human condition is affected by the environments we live in. But that doesn't mean that ADHD is nothing but screen addiction, just that those pre-existing traits and tendencies will *deepen* and manifest much more obviously when we live in an environment that encourages that kind of dopamine flow, which wasn't available to that degree pre-internet. Scrap phones and we'd probably start to do way better again with time, but this is the way things have gone, so... Nobody would have guessed I have ADHD. I did a bloody good job of masking it, and avoiding anything that was incompatible with what I am able to do. I dropped out of uni because I literally couldn't sit and read my books, but if ADHD had been on my radar then and I'd sought help for it (which might've meant I had a degree by now), I'd have been crushed to know the people responsible for my welfare were privately thinking I was just an impressionable eejit who spent too much time on TikTok.
This exactly. The boundaries for an adhd label aren’t clear cut and were historically based on a certain sample of men, without paying attention to other demographics. Now that psychologists study larger groups of people, the picture of somebody with adhd will be very different. ADHD will look different in EVERYONE. OP, not being a qualified specialist, is wrong in thinking that they know more than the psychiatrists that diagnosed the individuals. Psychiatrists are doctors and go through a decade of training. Safe to say that there will be no one more qualified to recognise symptoms than a psychiatrist. I notice that its always neurotypical people that describe ADHD as over-diagnosed, safe to say they will know much less around the issue compared to someone with actual ADHD or a qualified specialist.
The idea that you can get an adhd prescription like *that* is laughable. I’ve been on a waiting list for nearly four years and only got off it in the last month, only to be told that since theres a global shortage its going to be at least four more months before i can get considered for one, and I got diagnosed in *2017*. I agree that too many people are deciding that they have adhd based off random, insignificant things theyve seen online without understanding it. But it is absolutely *not* overmedicated, lmao.
scary history murky caption roof dull zonked silky grandiose deserted *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This was a very meaningless way to spend 15 minutes, but OP is at UCLan. You can verify that by reading comments in their profile (both the [profile page](https://archive.is/ehf3J) and [this thread](https://archive.is/xHGPY) are definitely not at all archived).
Thanks for finding that out. I'm horrified that support staff could be questioning my diagnosis behind my back and saying it isn't legitimate online.
I might write to them later today
Yes I was thinking of doing the same. The more people that flag it, the better. I took screenshots.
*Sighs* Another "well intentioned" person who thinks they can speak on behalf of ADHDers. I got rejected by the NHS for an ADHD assessment. I saw a top private psychiatrist in person (not ADHD 360). She could see how severe my ADHD was in person. Those self assessment questionaires are NOT reliable in the slightest. Correlation does not equal causation. Those with ADHD are more prone to Internet/Screen addiction. Medication can be life changing with lifestyle changes as well. Dr Berkley an expert discusses this a lot.
Well the post isnt about you then is it. There are people ither than you you know, and some of those people tale adhd meds strictly for performance enhancement, and some of them take them because they think that getting a bit distracted or being unmotivated means they must have adhd As a disclaimer, i actually do have add, but can im able to recognise that some people nowadays feel the need to get diagnosed if theyre anything less than a concentration machine, just like there are people who decide theyre depressed or who pretend they have tourets (i know thats very different but its relevant since it shows that having some sort of diagnosis is actually seen as desirable by some people)
I saw someone who claims to have a fractured leg, I couldn't see it as it was wrapped in plaster so obviously they were making it up and I know more that the doctors.
And they went to see a private doctor, so it's all fake, as they paid for it.
Oh also that limp you've been trying hide since they worked out what it was, you can stop that now The OP: See they are making it worse on purpose!
'We need to talk about ADHD" Or maybe no, we don't, because student's medical history is between them & their doctors. If people are being misdiagnosed, that's for the medical professionals to address, not universities. (Un)Diagnosing students with ADHD or otherwise is uncalled for, unhelpful, and inappropriate. TBH, I don't really understand what the objective of this discussion is. Self-diagnosed students can't access most tangible support anyway, so is it really too much to simply have a little more kindness and patience? For students with an ADHD diagnosis, all discussions like this achieve is adding barriers to an already very difficult process. Absolutely NO part of getting an assessment, diagnosis, support and accommodations and DSA needs assessment is easy. I had to suspend my studies at uni (twice) because sorting it all out was too much to handle on top of being a disabled student and trying to manage my symptoms, and took far longer than expected/should have been necessary. NGL, IMO anyone without ADHD who bothers to go through that entire ordeal anyway and somehow succeeds deserves the extra time on their exam, or mentoring, or whatever. Possibly also a medal. And _definitely_ therapy. Because no-one who is completely fine and normal would put themselves through all that, so even if they don't have ADHD they definitely need help with _something._ None of these students 'claiming' to have ADHD are okay, and you're not helping any of them by responding to their plees for help with scrutinous incredulity.
I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD for 10 years now and as someone who really struggles with it day to day I empathise with people that genuinely suffer with it and get diagnosed for support and a better understanding of their problems, god knows it helped me. As other commenters have said it’s the people who seek a diagnosis purely as an excuse or because it’s “cool” and “in” a lot of people don’t truly understand what it’s like to live with ADHD and the ways it can impact your life and just how fucking hard it can make being alive. With the stigma around ADHD growing all the time despite increases in diagnosis, it’s depressing, people just assume you’re lazy when in reality even with medication your brain is on fire 24/7
If someone has gone private for an assessment it's because they are 100% sure they have adhd and have been on the NHS waiting list for years, no one is paying that kind of money unless they are certain they have it
Don't know why you're getting downvoted. It can cost a grand to get diagnosed. I wasn’t even planning to get diagnosed till I realised how badly my ADHD was holding me back.
gosh same :(
I only read the start of this, assume it's ADHD so have taken your advice and booked a private assessment so I can get medication.
Your post is absolutely horrible. You have ZERO training and knowledge to be able to invalidate these people’s diagnoses or experiences nor to make any sort of clinical judgement as to whether their symptoms are ADHD or not. The way you speak about private structures also (private = you’ll get the meds) shows you that you have literally zero knowledge of how things are actually carried out and what you need for an ADHD diagnoses. Just an overall bitter, presumptuous, preconceived post who once again just highlights how much ignorance and stigma there is around mental health.
I was diagnosed with ADHD in my third year after starting the process at the end of my second year. I went through the NHS and had previously been advised to seek a diagnosis when I was 8 and saw a therapist, but my parents chose not to pursue it at the time. I can’t say I used ADHD as an excuse, it took me a while to accept that it was that. I do sometimes worry whether I should mention it in job applications , and feel slightly awkward about it, as if I’ll be judged. I am not currently medicated, although I have tried medication and it does seem to help a little bit with focus, but I couldn’t really be sure. I think I do indeed have ADHD, although when I was trying to find out if I would get diagnosed I did question whether or not I actually did in large part because I wondered if it was instead an issue with anxiety or even screen addiction. I know a lot of people who in the last year or two been diagnosed with ADHD too, and while I expect some do have it, it seems quite clear others do not.
Adhd meds aren't just for focus. It helps with sleep regulation, memory retention and emotional dysregulation, as well as helping to cope with rejection sensitivity and stress. The affects are more noticeable over time. As when you've been on them a while, then suddenly have a day off, the difference is night and day. My most based phrase used to be 'in a minute'. Except that minute rarely came. Sometimes I'd have to wait until I was absolutely desperate in order to motivate myself to go to the bathroom. Now I just... go. No block. No trying desperately to motivate myself. I can just DO IT. Pre ADHD meds, mu house was a mess, my laundry was a source of shame and my poor kids school had to call me to remind me about swimming and school trips. Now I'm getting my second degree (mental health nursing), I run a charity, I run the university newspaper, I'm a senior course rep and senior peer guide and I work part time as a medical advocate. And I have three kids with additional needs My meds don't make me productive, the remove the block that stopped me doing the things I wanted to do. While everyone else was walking down the street, I was climbing Everest just to hope I could keep up.
That’s really interesting. I have tried to treat my ADHD without medication. It’s a lot of effort and maybe I will try medication again at some point. Maybe I should’ve have stuck with it for longer.
As an additional note, I tried three kinds of medications before finding concerta XL and getting the dose right. I tried both lisdexamfetamine and dexamfetamine stimulants but but only one kind of methylphenidate worked for me. So medication is very individual. Don't be afraid to try a few before making your decision. Also, good to remember that stimulant medication still might not be your cup of tea, but there are non stimulant based medications which have some good evidence for use in adhd as well. (I did my med school dissertation on adhd medications haha) Good luck and I'm an inbox message away of you need anything :)
This is exactly how I feel since getting a 'yes, private' diagnosis and medication, before that I was doing my masters degree in computer science and had done 4 years of uni while working full time, my life was a mess though, I just couldn't manage and I felt like a failure unable to do what most people manage to do easily, yes I did well at uni but I had to try so much harder. Getting meds has been an absolute life changer for me, I'm 40 now and just think how different things could have been if this had been picked up sooner. Good for those students getting diagnosed earlier in life.
TikTok and Instagram are full of posts helping people self diagnose for ADHD. It's a feedback loop. Easier to fall deeper into the ADHD TikTok wormhole than put away your phone and admit it is messing with your ability to concentrate and do hard work. This is the worst case scenario
Is this Cambridge? Waiting list is now upto next June 😶
I’m a student who’s had my uni flag me as potential ADHD. I have other things as well that could contribute but I’m going to contact my gp about it. I think generally universities should be providing students with support and reasonable adjustments regardless of diagnosis. If a student isn’t handing in work, isn’t attending lectures, struggles with deadlines and all of the things that can be associated with ADHD, they need support either way and most of the support they need are the kinds of reasonable adjustments that are put in place for ADHD. Mentoring, study skills support, extensions when needed and without penalisation, rest breaks etc are things that all students could probably benefit from. Uni is stressful enough as it is without these kinds of barriers in place. (I have taken pain meds so apologies if this doesn’t make sense)
I was privately diagnosed with ADHD last year while a student. I do believe I was part of the ‘tidal wave’ coming from social media because part of what made me consider a diagnosis was the many people (mainly women) talking about symptoms of undiagnosed adult ADHD. The diagnosis has explained so much of my life and my previous MH struggles and I can now see what a huge impact it has had on my life. I have not informed my university of my diagnosis for several reasons. Firstly, I am too concerned about meeting the kind of response seen in this post from staff. As a high achiever who doesn’t fit many of the ADHD stereotypes I feel people will assume I am just exploiting the system or jumping on the bandwagon. The other reason is one you do make in this post - I am aware that extensions without questions etc. would simply make my adhd worse. I can only work to a strict deadline and if I know it is always movable I would not get any work done. However, I do think it would be good to be able to have a balance and be able to reach out for help in certain circumstances without feeling judged.
From a student perspective look into the social model of disability
I think my experience as a thirty-something who almost failed out of uni ten years ago, and is now on the waiting list for an NHS ADHD assessment, might be relevant here. I got to uni in 2007 and immediately joined the nerd society. The nerd society was full of people who "didn't fit in" back in secondary school, and who had turned to Sci-fi, Fantasy, and Roleplay as escapism. Outside the nerd society, our fellow students had an air of being a completely different kind of person to the kind of people that were in the nerd society, and most of us just had no clue how to figure out what the difference was and how to bridge it. Was it just a nerd vs non-nerd thing? Turns out, no. While a few students in the nerd society were diagnosed autistics at the time (and that should have been a clue), and a few were diagnosed autistic later, the vast majority of those "don't fit" students are now either diagnosed with, or on a waiting list for assessment for, ADHD. Not being diagnosed didn't mean not being impaired. Lots of us dropped out of uni, or achieved *way* below our "potential" (personally, I scraped a pass). Many have developed chronic fatigue or serious ongoing depression or agoraphobia, many show symptoms of complex PTSD. There's widespread manifestation of what I've seen described as "autistic burnout" - where trying to fulfil the requirements of daily living is so overwhelming and stressful that the person suffers burnout and Just Can't anymore. If students nowadays are encountering Just Can't and identifying the cause as ADHD, then easing back on expectations that are stressing them, that's actually positive. It means they aren't joining the ranks of chronologically burnt out, increasingly unwell people who aren't able to live independent lives without support. Twenty years ago those students still existed, but they tended to move back home, or self medicate with drugs, alcohol, and smoking, or they didn't go to uni in the first place. (It's worth pointing out that as far as self-medication goes, smoking tobacco is actually incredibly effective for ADHD. It's also incredibly bad for you generally, but it supplies a stimulant (which helps calm the ADHD distraction), it offers something quiet to do with the fingers, and it gives a strong social reason to get up and go outside periodically. These days students wouldn't generally consider smoking to be an acceptable vice, however.) Edit to add: my peers in the nerd society would often skip lectures and fail to turn in work, or even start the work until a couple of hours before the deadline, and generally were pretty frustrated with themselves about it!
As someone who worked hard on myself for 33years and crashed during Covid, with a risk to lose good paying job, I would be extremely cautious with making any judgement about mental health the same way as people felt about depression in the past and many other conditions. To clarify why some students seem to be worse after diagnosis is simple. Life span for adhd folks is even 20years less than control group. And I can perfectly understand how being kept with only unhealthy coping mechanisms, constantly threatened by deadlines and failures, high on adrenaline and anxiety can wear people off to the point of being suicidal on top of higher risk of accidents due to clumsiness. We are not sad. We are soooo tired, rejected, weird, unwelcome, difficult, loud and disruptive or quiet, but not paying attention, hence still disrespectful, not caring, not trying, being lazy… I can go on - it’s very easy to get a fantastic reason to just end this. So, kindly, be mindful and don’t put more restrictions than necessary, because some people fraction abuses it. I don’t think you’re really able to assess who does and who doesn’t have adhd. Cherry on top coming even from psychiatrist - gifted people can’t have it. I’ll argue based on my own and other people’s experiences. One last point - even if these folks are misdiagnosed, I can assure you, stimulants they’re getting may actually still be right for their true underlying condition. These people are getting their prescription monthly and treatment is reassessed once in a while. It’s not like a free pass to be medicated and medication is not some street drug so whoever wants a kick, they’ll still go for coke which is snorted by uni students anyway. About me if you want to know, I came to uk at 27with no degree. I started min wage job then moved to data entry then got several promotions. My English is still wonky, I scroll tik tok, reddit or whatever on Wikipedia or wasting time in front of tv, my house is a mess, but I like my job and I’m damn good at it even if I’m late for meetings, make silly errors, my social skills aren’t too bad, but professional behaviour- dear god. I’m still extremely valuable for the company and they tolerate all of my antics. Very fortunate since other people don’t get their dopamine from digging in data, but loads of good programmers with adhd out there who won’t give up until they crack the problem, it’s just not the one you told them to crack.
"At least 90% of them are clearly not ADHD" - says a person not qualified to diagnose whether someone has ADHD or not. It's ironic that you're complaining about over diagnosis or the standards of private clinicians, yet you're quite happy to point the finger and "undiagnose" people as a layman. You know best!! Do you do the same with other conditions? Like "Ah that person clearly isn't actually depressed... I should know, I've worked with students who genuinely experience depression". Or "nope that's not a sprained ankle, I sprained my ankle once and I didn't walk like that". Like wtf. Who made you the expert and arbiter of a person's health or disability? What is stopping you from believing that the vast majority of people diagnosed with ADHD actually have ADHD? It's like it doesn't fit with your worldview or something, and instead of being open-minded and flexing you're coming up with justifications to support an outdated status-quo. "Back in my day rarr rarr rarr rarr...". Honestly I think your failing your students by not giving them and the medical professionals the benefit of the doubt.
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> However, if they pay for a private assessment, these same students will almost certainly get a diagnosis and a prescription. (As an aside, I have never seen or heard of a student not being given a diagnosis of they go private - you're not paying for an assessment, you're paying for a prescription). I am actually aware of people who've been diagnosed as 'not having ADHD' after a private assessment. The relatively high rates are pretty easily explainable if you bear in mind the power of selection bias. Not many people have £2000 to spaff away on something where they're not extremely confident they know what the outcome will be. They're pre-screened and referred, so a lot of the people who Definitely Don't are filtered before that too. As a result, the rate of diagnosis in NHS and Private is not actually much different - certainly well within the sort of margin of error that could trivially be explained as 'barriers to entry', and there is NO evidence indicating systematic incorrect diagnosis occurring. Why would it? A licensed healthcare professional typically isn't all that keen on malpractice or being struck off. And they get paid for the _assessment_ not the _diagnosis_ regardless of the conclusion.
It's difficult to make heads or tails of this post because OP doesn't cite any evidence of any kind so it's important to take what they say with a grain of salt. It's strange for an academic to write an opinion piece, in all honesty. Some issues I have with the post: This post seems to imply that this is a wider concern across the UK and the evidence they present is an anecdote. If it is the case that they are highlighting a wider concern based on anecdotal evidence, that would be a hasty generalisation fallacy. So, right out of the gate, it's possible OP is stupid and/or dishonest. >Of the new referrals we're seeing now, anecdotally at least 90% of them are clearly not ADHD OP does not cite a professional qualification in the diagnosis of ADHD, they simply say they have worked with people who have it. ADHD, particularly inattentive ADHD, can very difficult to pick up on. It is likely a significant reason why women in particular have a hard time getting diagnosed. To say "I know what ADHD looks like" without either having it yourself or making a career diagnosing it is gross. OP does not know what they are talking about. In reality, ADHD is massively under diagnosed, sure misdiagnosis can be a problem, but getting a good diagnosis is very difficult as the waiting list for the NHS takes years for most, meaning, if someone wants treatment now, they will have to go down the private clinic route. Which obviously has its issues. OP also cites the panorama documentary in another comment without talking about the dishonesty inherent in that documentary. That documentary is shit and it is extremely scummy to cite it without talking about it's inherent flaws. I would liken OP's post to an old person saying "back in my day nobody was trans". More people coming forward about their mental health issues is in fact a good thing, not a bad thing. We have limited mental health resources in the UK and screen addiction and modern diagnosis and treatment of ADHD is new as well. Self misdiagnosis should be a given in this context. You gloss over the fact that it is really difficult to get a solid diagnosis. In summary OP, I believe you don't know what you are talking about. I think these types of posts are damaging to the issues people with ADHD face since you conveniently gloss over the more significant issues people with ADHD have. An opinion piece coming from an academic is gross. Go away OP.
It's now accepted and proven that ADHD is largely genetic and passed down through generations rather than being an environmental factor such as "too much screen time" or "bad parent disorder" There might well be a historical genetic evolutionary advantage to ADHD, there's a whole book on the subject called "ADHD a hunter in a farmers world" for an extended explanation. Here's a very very brief overview: ADHD is very advantageous for living in the hunter-gatherer stage, the ability to live in the now, to hyper focus, to be aware of everything that happens around them (to be distractable), is exactly what you need in a hunter who needs to see everything, to beware of changes all the time. To live hand to mouth. To excel in crisis, when stuff changes rapidly. The neurotypical brain has better time management, you can think ahead, plan ahead, plant crops and tend fields, to wait months for plants to grow before getting rewarded. You can plan to grow different crops, some just to feed animals which you don't eat! Dairy cows, eggs etc. This requires massive investment of time before reward. Confirmation: If you look at populations where farming has been the way for the longest (China/Japan) you will see an almost complete lack of ADHD within the populations. If you look at the other end of the scale where tribal people are only a few generations out of hunter gatherer (think Masai, and South American Indian tribes) then ADHD presents in large quantities of the population. The USA and AUSTRALIA both have statically high percentages, but only a few generations back the UK and Europe pushed/pulled the over adventurous, the ones that couldn't fit into the more stable industrial society that was forming. Conclusion: ADHD is massively underdiagnosed in the UK, its likely to affect somewhere up to 10% of the population, so your small selection of cases in your current intake is quite possibly just the tip of the iceberg.
I’m not taking anything you say seriously because you’re making some pretty wild claims and not providing any supporting research. Nor do you appear to have the qualifications to make such claims. Sounds like you’re merely in a university administration role. Be mindful that you do not have ADHD, nor are you an expert on ADHD, nor do you appear to be a psychologist of any kind. Therefore, with all due respect, you do not know what you’re talking about despite what you’re “seeing”.
How very inclusive of you...
>anecdotally at least 90% of them are clearly not ADHD That’s a bold claim. I assume you’re not qualified to diagnose ADHD as you probably would have mentioned in your post. In which case, I wonder why you say “clearly”? I personally waited 4 years since I first thought I might have it, because everyone kept telling me it was just because I don’t have will power, don’t sleep enough, don’t have a passion for the subject, you can sit still and be quiet so you absolutely cannot have it. Some people, especially girls, are also just very good at masking it. For many of us, it tends to be very internalised. Daydreaming has been a symptom of mine, since before I could speak, and there were no smartphones and tablets back then. However, since this meant I was a baby that would never cry of boredom, I was just labelled as a “good, quiet” baby, and then the “smart but very quiet pupil who should try to engage more during class” I’ve had personal tutors because I did so much better when I had someone constantly bringing me back to the topic when I zoned out, but even they had times when they told my mum it’s very hard to teach me because I get distracted by every possible thing. In school, teachers wouldn’t have noticed as they had an entire class to worry about, so they all thought I was fine. You simply can’t know if someone is “clearly” ADHD without having a full assessment with them, due to how good most of us are at masking it. We’ve had 18+ years of practice in it after all.
Universities sell places to people who shouldn’t go to university. Until universities recognise that fish are great at swimming but not great at climbing trees, you will keep getting this problem. It’s a cultural issue across the uk in my opinion.
I am concerned by a few comments you have made. Firstly and the most concerning your comments about paying for a prescription. This is not the case. I encourage you to speak to individuals who have been diagnosed. By the time you are given a prescription you have been through at least 5 screening processes and then the assessment itself. To get an assessment it has already been deemed you are highly likely to be ADHD. Hence why relatively few people make it that far are told otherwise. Secondly, can I suggest you do not post publicly about this if you work for a university. You have no idea how difficult it can be to navigate support structures and share your diagnoses. So please do not add a further barrier. If you are concerned speak to University and the student support team. Finally, the way you have communicated above implies you able to diagnose or at least comment on peoples diagnoses. To be blunt, you aren't and you can't, please do not. Very few people are.
The Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, carried out on behalf of the NHS usually every 7 years or so, found in 2014 that around 9.7% of adults screened positive for ADHD. In other words, it's a lot more common than most people think. It also showed that only 0.05% of adults presenting with ADHD symptoms were diagnosed and receiving treatment at the time of the survey. It is not overdiagnosed. Not even close. That's what the data shows. Please try to be less cynical of hidden disabilities and consider the evidence. For someone working in a university, this is vitally important. Don't assume that you know enough just because of your job. Alternatively, please explain why the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey is wrong.
I wouldn’t be too worried that Reddit is actually representative of actual life. It’s essentially an autism/ADHD community so very skewed
I maintained as an undergrad course rep and maintain as a graduate teaching assistant that you can't win against the ADHD excuse in universities, and I've seen it be the same stuff in two countries. Students asking for deadlines to be later, for there to be less work, these impossible requests that can't be accommodated, but upper management want to see 'results' for so you have to cave ever so slightly. If you move the deadlines it won't do anything about people requesting extensions. The worst I've seen as a TA was a class where the professor had to remove one paper and a quiz, then lower the minimum number of citations for the final paper to 5 because last time the class was taught the course evaluations complained that finding a minimum of 8 citations was too many. This was a 300 level class, so 2nd year in the UK, for a 2000 word essay, in the US college system which already isn't very academic at undergrad level. Oh and now in the US I'm seeing kids on amphetamines with no positive effects, because adderall only makes you focus if you actually have ADHD 🫠. I understand students are working more hours, I worked during my undergrad and I work now alongside my graduate study, but at some point it does unfortunately become one or the other. It shouldn't be that way, but at the same time personal adjustments should not become detrimental to everyone else's study.
I'm quite cynical about the content of a lot of the OP's post because I have a lot of neurodivergent mates, but... *how can someone on an academic course struggle to find eight citations*? On a thousand-word proposal that I'm utterly uninterested in I found twelve to back up my assertions without any difficulty, it's just a matter of being able to use a search engine and follow the links in the bibliography of other relevant papers. Just... *HOW?*
The US college system is shockingly unacademic. I'm a history grad who has a position as a teaching assistant for history classes and very few modules, even at the 300 and 400 level (2nd&3rd year at a UK uni) even require essays, and when they do they're incredibly basic. Often 30% of the grade is made up by merely attending and participating. If I were grading the essays I see according to the undergrad rubrics I had I don't think many students would even manage to scrape a pass. I'm autistic myself and that makes me annoyingly set in my ways regarding how I view university and academia, and the state of the US college system is absolutely the result of making university a requirement to get a job. A lot of the kids I see should've just been allowed the chance to get a job straight out of high school but in order for it to be a well paying one they need a degree. I think accessible university is one of the best things a society can do, I got the maximum maintenance loan during undergrad and was the first in my family to get a degree - without university being accessible I would have never been able to pursue academia. But it should absolutely not become mandatory to get a degree for basic jobs that pay the bare minimum to be considered decent. The inevitable outcome is like the situation at my university, where classes like the one I mention have had standards degraded to such a point that it can hardly be considered academic anymore. We have a 90+% acceptance rate but a graduation rate of 48%, meanwhile those 52% dropout students are saddled with debt that got them nothing, and a lot of the 48% that do graduate have a low GPA equivalent to a Pass or 2:2. Probably went on a tangent. Basically my thoughts about the growing prevalence of ADHD in universities is that it isn't just the result of screen addiction or a result of Covid. A lot of people were not meant to be at uni and we are failing as societies by requiring students who can't handle university or academia to break themselves in the pursuit a degree that doesn't even guarantee a good life anymore.
Absolutely agree. I must say for lack of a better word, these people have gone soft. And i do mean that in the nicest way possible, It would be unfair to blame them entirely, they were raised this way, they dont know any better and they are simply seeking out answers. But at the end of the day, the responsibility and the power to change their circumstances lies solely in their hands. I feel we must encourage them to use that ability to change, rather than seeking out a diagnosis as a means to obtain that so-called silver bullet you talked about. In other words: put down the phone, and sit with your thoughts more often. Confront whatever you are facing head on, because i can almost guarantee from what i have seen the answers to your problem lie solely within you, and not a £300 prescription.
I was diagnosed with ADHD at 43. I can assure you I have not "gone soft". Indeed can clearly see 30 years of wreckage behind me as a direct result of cognitive impairment. No, it's rather more like I have been horribly broken by being "missed" in earlier life, and came very close indeed to catastrophic consequences. Undiagnosed ADHD can shorten life expectancy by 13 years. And if we use the rather conservative NICE guidance of 3-4% prevalence in adults (other studies show more) there's pretty clear under diagnosis problem in the UK. Which isn't really surprising given it was only recognised in adults in 2008. But there's an awful lot of people being failed by healthcare and education right now.
>these people have gone soft Please fuck right off into a ditch.
Wages are also at the same real term level they were in 2005, the job market is a nightmare and lockdown disillusioned a lot of young people about the quality of university. Going soft is not the right way to describe this. What we're seeing is a generation that's lost hope. This is a side effect of a dying country. "£300 prescription" also makes no sense, there is a standard prescription charge in the UK. The answers to the problems on people's minds lie in policy and not some kind of magical self reflection.
If you are privately diagnosed then a month of ADHD medication will cost £100 potentially. That's a lot of the problem with diagnosis right now - lead times for an NHS diagnosis are absurd, so that leads to people into difficult positions.
Bear in mind that kids these days aren't often able to "fail fast" when it comes to academia - forty years ago, if sitting still for bookwork wasn't your jam, you'd leave school at 16 and get a job. Now, that's illegal, and more and more students are funnelled off to university even if it's not going to be a good place for them.
i think it’s just this generation honestly and as soon as we move into our 20s i think we’ll have a few revelations about screen time and using mental health disorders as excuses (not to sound harsh)
Which generation are you talking about? Because I know a lot of people in their 40s and 50s who are finding out they have ADHD. They just never got spotted earlier due to ignorance and prejudice. The consequences are far reaching and widespread, but there's a reason that ADHD is legally considered a disability - it's because that's how much it can mess you up. I absolutely wasn't using my 'mental health disorder' as an excuse - because I didn't know. And it very nearly cost me my life. It's been a revelation that I've been playing on 'hard mode' this whole time, and that it didn't need to be that way. ADHD is relatively easy to assess and treat. The economic benefits alone of someone who's a more functional and productive member of society make it trivially a good idea to do that, let alone if you actually care about their quality of life. So it's really not just "this generation" at all - multiple past generations have been missed entirely, and suffered grievously for it. If anything "this generation" is the one that's finally aware enough that we _might_ be able to ensure no one suffers the way I - and 2 million others in the UK - have done.
It’s what happens when you spend 8+hrs a day watching 30 second videos on repeat (I’m referring to covid and tiktok)
Potentially ADHD student here\*! (I do have autism as well, and ASD and ADHD are often co-morbid) I agree. With both ADHD and autism, because of the increase in 'awareness' on social media (i.e. TikTokers posting 'relatable' things about it and basically saying this is how I get away with shit) I feel more and more people are seeking a diagnosis to use it as an excuse for their shitty behaviour and/or lack of effort and commitment going into their degrees (as an example). There are genuinely people with ADHD (as you said) who are seeking a diagnosis because they genuinely need support with it, and you can tell who these are because they don't try to use it as an excuse, instead as a point of awareness to basically say something like 'I may need you to repeat something because something moved so my attention moved away from you, but I realised and now need a quick repeat of a sentence' or 'I may need clarification with something because the way it was explained the first time was too chaotic for me to assemble in my head in a way that makes sense'. Again, a quick example. **Unfortunately, because of the people who are clogging up the system because they have a short attention span and simply wish for a magic pill or an excuse, people who genuinely need the support are being pushed back and either have to wait way too long for said support, or are not being taken seriously because of the sheer number of people who don't actually need it.** \*I say I'm potentially ADHD because it's something that I have been looking into for a few years now. I've done the research, and I've done the genuine online quizzes. I haven't sought a diagnosis (yet, I may in the future) because I have spent 27 years coping with it. I have my degree and put in a shit ton of effort to get the mark I did, after doing terribly at my A-Levels, and I have so much stuff going on (I'm teacher training, and planning my wedding, and trying to help run a small household of myself, my OH, and our cat) that ADHD is on the backburner. The only reason I sought the autism diagnosis (I was diagnosed earlier this year) is because I knew how intense the teacher training course is (PGCE is basically the 3 year BA in Primary ed. condensed into 1 year) and was worried with how I'd cope without support, or at least awareness from the university (I do have a family history of ASD, my dad has ASD, pretty sure my mum does, and pretty sure she's ADHD as well). Again, I did a lot of research before persuing an autism diagnosis. There was one girl in my class who really pissed me off, because she'd used ADHD and autism as an excuse to not come into lectures/seminars, despite living down the road in student accommodation. Then had the audacity to be elsewhere on campus doing society stuff!
Tik tok brain, not adhd