I am shocked to learn that a BBC investigation has revealed that, to quote their headline, ‘ADHD services shutting door to new NHS patients as demand soars‘. I am shocked in the sense that the NHS appeared to offer ADHD services in the first place. The investigation adds: ‘The BBC has identified 15 local areas that have closed waiting lists and another 31 that have introduced tighter criteria, making it more difficult to access support.’ Well, I had been on an NHS waiting list, having been referred by a GP, for over five years before abandoning what was left of my few remaining principles and ‘going private‘ and, given that I’ve never asked to be removed from the waiting list, it’s now been eight years. For those of us with neurological conditions – and around 3/4% of us have ADHD – the effects are at least damaging and at worst life-wrecking and, as ever, if there is anything wrong with your brain the powers-that-be deem it as far less important to address than anything physical.
It’s all too late for me. A GP at our local health centre said as much. Talking to him, over the phone of course: no need to see me in person, he explained that I should just get over myself. “You’re old, you’ve had your life, there’s nothing I can do and you can’t have any drugs. Now just fuck off and leave me alone. Don’t you realise I have people who are genuinely ill to deal with?” My memory of the actual words used is a little hazy, I admit, but that felt like the gist of it. It felt very much like a hobnail boot being launched into my nether reasons.
How I got through life in one piece, I shall never know. Not only was I diagnosed with ADHD, I was nearer to the severe version of it and, together with my clinical depression, it has not been a straightforward journey through life (life is always a journey these days, you see). But thanks to a heady combination of Oscar standard acting, bullshit, bluff, bluster, sheer bloody-mindedness and, yes, hard work I somehow made it into old age without crashing and burning. An inability to concentrate, to take in and retain information and to prepare written documents wasn’t exactly ideal for a lifelong civil servant, but thanks to a heady combination of my own efforts and those of kind and sympathetic colleagues and managers I made it through. In some ways, that’s my triumph in my life, but I don’t feel great about it because I know had my condition been picked up earlier in life and dealt with, whether by medication or counselling things could have been so different and, potentially, so much better.
ADHD is not a pleasant condition, with a brain that just won’t shut down, overwhelming one with a constantly changing battery of often unrelated thoughts at all hours of the day and night. I know now I had this condition as a child, a very young one at that, and the lowly career status I achieved was entirely down to that. In many ways, it was nothing short of a miracle I got as far as I did.
When I was a child, I am not sure anyone was really considered to have ADHD. They – we – were thought to be lazy, disruptive, unable to concentrate; beyond help. With its ugly twin brother clinical depression, life has not been easy, nor as rewarding as it might have been. With that in mind, I am appalled that today’s younger generation have to jump through so many hoops just to be tested for ADHD.
If someone is waiting eight years for an assessment, then frankly they have no chance in life. And for a working class kid without the financial wherewithal to go private, it’s potentially an educational and career death sentence. ADHD does not make you thick – at least I don’t think it does in my case – but if you are left undiagnosed, how is anyone supposed to interpret one’s condition? I know what many of my teachers at school and managers at work felt about me. ‘Could do better‘ is a massive understatement.
ADHD affects everything, from simple domestic tasks, through money management right through to carrying out functions at work. Thousands of children and adults struggle through life knowing they are different and not in a good way. That’s certainly how I felt and given that this is our one life, do we not, as human beings, have some kind of moral obligation to ensure that all of us, despite our conditions and subsequent limitations are given a better chance in life?
It hurts when you are derided for doing, or not doing, something it is judged you should manage with ease. I remember a woodwork teacher at school ripping into me for doing so badly in an exam. “You recorded the worst marks in woodwork I have ever seen,” he said to me, loud and stern of face. What was I supposed to say to that? That I did it purposely? I’m not sure if what he said was true, or how he could possibly have known, but I knew he hated me for what he saw as my indifference to his teaching. Once, after a scathing attack on my abysmal work, he ordered me out of the woodwork room. I walked and and carried on walking until I got home, which was where I stayed until later on one of his colleagues arrived at our house, wondering where I was. I was ordered to see the Deputy Headmaster the following day whereupon he tore a strip of me, leaving me a quivering wreck, tears in full flow. When someone says ADHD is their superpower, I am taken back to that moment. It was my kryptonite.
This probably still goes on today, with children and adults whose conditions remain undiagnosed, and it isn’t right. Running down mental health and neurological services has been a clear choice by (the last Conservative) government and while I accept that the new Labour government has basically got to turn a huge tanker around, I will be hugely disappointed if they have not turned things round by the time of the next general election in 2029. It is not just a political duty: it is a moral imperative.
Treating ADHD and all other neurological condition, as well as mental illnesses, is about fixing people’s health in the same way that the NHS fixes physical health. People talk about treating mental and physical conditions with the same priorities, but that’s all they do: talk. In truth, nothing has changed in my lifetime. And crucially attitudes haven’t changed much, either. If your head doesn’t work ‘normally’, the stigma is still there.
The BBC investigation is welcome and long overdue. I hope government now takes real action to deal with ADHD waiting lists because if they don’t they are condemning people to an existence that won’t enable them to reach their potential. Surely we all deserve the chance to do that and knowing that I haven’t only makes me more committed to doing what I can to make the world a better and more equal place for current and future generations.
