Conservative vice chair and all round gobshite halfwit Lee Anderson comes out with some bollocks, doesn’t he? Well, truth be known, all these Tories talk bollocks these days, but Anderson is on a different level in the bollocks department. This week, the non-expert on everything tackled the vexed subject of Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD as those of us with ADHD, who aren’t capable of remembering what these long words actually mean, know it. And he came to some interesting conclusions. Children with ADHD were little more than “nuisances” and that the condition was caused by … yes, he really said this … “bad parenting“. Well, that’s me told.
Earlier this year, and far too late in life for it to make any difference, I was diagnosed with ADHD. This is not something that simply turns up in old age, but something that’s always been there. I can accept that people have found, and still find, me to be a nuisance, but whether this is down to “bad parenting”, as Anderson claims, I rather doubt it. I am no expert, but I would have thought this was a neurological condition and not something handed down to me by my parents. In other words, no one’s fault, unlike my depression and other associated conditions which probably came about as a result of my upbringing, but who knows? But here’s the thing. I know I have written this type of blog before, but no one would ever make such a comment about another condition or illness.
No one, not even Lee Anderson (well, maybe…), would say that people with cancer were nuisances, or that cancer was caused by bad parenting, because that’s not only offensive, it’s also utter tosh. And it comes down to a simple truth which is that still today mental health is a stigma because too many people don’t treat it seriously or, if you are a shit thick Tory MP, think it’s a thing at all.
I’m sure that Anderson isn’t aware it’s Mental Health Awareness Day next Tuesday (C U Next Tuesday, Lee) and, let’s face it, he won’t be the only one. This year’s theme is ‘Mental health is a universal human right’, which of course sounds nice but, and I am sorry to be critical of the words used by a charity, but no it isn’t. If we have a universal human right to good mental health, then how come we don’t get it? I had to pay a parasitical private health care company to get an ADHD diagnosis, such are the NHS waiting lists these days, and there is literally nothing, bar referring me to a few websites, that the NHS can do for my depression, apart from prescribing me some drugs. “A universal human right“? I wish.
Although I don’t take Anderson particularly seriously on anything, his words are part of a corrosive pattern, set by the political party to which he belongs. I feel it as another kick in the guts, another sly dig at those of us who feel we are not ‘normal’, whatever that means. 13 years of Conservative misrule has led me to completely give up the unequal fight with depression and just let it do its worst. And now I know I have had ADHD since the year dot has provided me with another condition I can do absolutely nothing about.
It’s great that Mental Health Awareness Day is still a thing and for one day a year the great and the good, as well as sundry politicians and minor royals, will tell us “IT’S OKAY TO NOT BE OKAY“, although trust me when I say it really isn’t okay not being okay. The day is better than nothing, which is more than I can say for Lee Fucking Anderson, a execrable excuse of a human being who deserves a metaphorical bucket of shit tipped on his head at the coming General Election, and a real one today.
