Do You Have ADHD? - Channel 4

Rating:

Nobody wants to be schizophrenic these days. Why would they? It’s a horrible mental illness, one commonly treated with anti-psychotic drugs.

Believe it or not, it was frightfully fashionable in the 1960s. Dinner party guests clamoured to tell each other, ‘Well, I don’t know, I suppose I must be a little bit schizo!’

Quack psychiatrists made their names diagnosing actors and pop stars with the condition. The leading light was Scottish doctor and bestselling writer R.D. Laing, who treated Sean Connery by dosing him with LSD.

These days, the most talked about diagnosis is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder [ADHD]. Not a day passes without a celebrity or online influencer declaring proudly that they have ADHD — with the unspoken implication that this excuses all their failings and confirms what they’ve always felt... that they are special.

Follow the guidelines laid down in Do You Have ADHD?, and we can all be special. It’s easy. Before the first ad break, presenter Dr Karan Rajan urged us to download a questionnaire from the World Health Organisation [WHO], designed to identify key traits.

The questions have been set by three American professors at Harvard and the New York University medical schools, and given an impressive title: the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS-v1.1) Symptom Checklist.

Naturally, I paused the show and filled in the quiz immediately. This, I feel, proves impressively how limited my own attention span is.

Do I fidget, asked the WHO? Do I forget appointments? Do I make careless mistakes when engaged on boring tasks? Do I get distracted by noise around me?

Yes, all of the above. Now I can apply to join the eight-year NHS waiting list for an ADHD diagnosis, or take a shortcut and go private. Of course I’ll go private! If I had the patience to wait eight years, I wouldn’t have ADHD, would I?

And, fortunately, there are lots of clinics willing to take my money, in exchange for an assessment. Dr Clare Bailey Mosley, the widow of much-loved Daily Mail writer Michael Mosley, took the test, partly because she suspected her late husband had ADHD himself.

In her case, the outcome seemed eminently sensible: she exhibited some of the typical traits but could not be said to have ADHD because her daily life wasn’t impaired. 

Clearly, the same applied to Michael. No doubt, he had a butterfly mind and needed a deadline if he was to get a job finished, but that’s what made him a successful journalist.

The rest of this documentary was mostly shallow and trivial. Asked what indicators he looks for in children with ADHD,

Professor Stephen Scott of King’s College London said, ‘First of all, if you just watch them in the school playground, are they running around more than other kids?’

‘Running around’ is now a childhood medical condition. Nurse!