The last few weeks have been tough, you might have missed the reason why but I can assure you some of us haven't.
Recently ADHD has been all over the media, from Panorama, Sam Thompson and Steven Bartlett.
Not that long ago I wrote a blog 'The Fad Of ADHD' It was a tongue-in-cheek title suggesting you may want to think about what you are saying/thinking if that is your opinion.
I listed comments in there from journalists saying ADHD was some flavour-of-the-month illness that will soon be replaced with something else. I knew this rhetoric would grow but the last couple of weeks have been something else.
And now it happened, my parents asking me questions about the Panorama documentary which indirectly is asking about the validity of my diagnosis.
They have had to put up with my childhood behaviour, with teachers always having an issue with me and my mood swings. When I finally got my diagnosis at 31 a lot of this would have made sense to them and it most certainly did to me. What people don't realise is how hurtful and damaging these programmes/podcasts are. They dig up horrendous memories of childhood and beyond, of not being believed.
AKA everything is always your fault and it always will be...
I first tried to get diagnosed at 24 it took me 7 years to finally have someone listen and care about what I was saying.
You may think why did it take so long? Well firstly the NHS is desperately underfunded in mental health, so that route took me months with nothing coming, then the second time I went private I was asked to fill in 100 forms and post them back, in typical ADHD fashion I put them in a normal postbox and the practice never got them and wanted a further £800 to re do the assessment, in shame I told my parents they said 'I didn't have it', as I was so embarrassed and knew I would have faced repercussions.
I've never told them this #sorrymum.
Now I was stuck, not being able to afford to go private and knowing NHS would take years. So I carried on as normal, masking every day, crippled with insomnia, anxiety and attention problems. Knowing full well I had an illness I 'couldn't' treat.
I had every single symptom going. Imagine what it's like to know 100000% you have an illness and not be able to access the treatment, for 31 years. Then post-pandemic going back into work the anxiety got too much, I was crippled by thinking I would fail and that I had forgotten how to work in an office environment. I had to seek help and finally got it.
This leads me to the media right now, it seems ADHD bashing is the last form of disability discrimination which is acceptable and even more sinister it seems to be encouraged.
Of course with any industry there are ‘bad eggs’ but what I took from the Panorama documentary was a need for more funding into the NHS so these slap-dash approaches don’t happen, but with constant media attention putting down the validity of the illness why would minsters increase funding?
What I take issue with is why would anyone do this (the diagnoses) if they didn't have the condition. ADHD is painful, it's an incurable mental health disorder it's not a joke and it certainly is not fake/popular.
What are the benefits we are meant to get by faking having ADHD? The fact we have to take pharmaceutical speed every day?
Do you think these meds give us some unfair advantage people so desperately want? Let me break it to down, YOU (people cheating the system) have the advantage you always have done, medication helps yes, but I would rather not have to take a tablet every day that increases my blood pressure, kills my appetite and makes me crash every single day around 8 pm where my eyes sting like you have done a 15-hour red-eye flight, just to feel slightly more 'normal'.
Now let's get to Steven Barlett's podcast. I am aware he needs to fill the schedule and it's hard to get the level of calibre guest on each week he would like. But he has a MASSIVE platform, of varied listeners giving airtime to those pedalling untruths is very dangerous. Those that know me know I love a debate, I can't stand this modern echo chamber way of life however, there is a difference of opinion and there is plain lies/discrimination that's what I have an issue with.
So next time you hear of someone you know having been diagnosed think to yourself what's got them to that point, you will know if they are truthful or not. But please don't think of ADHD as an 'in vogue illness' it's an incurable mental health condition and should be respected as such.
One of the main reasons Mattr exists is so those using it can be totally free of judgement in a space which supports them. When it seems we will never get a break from the media or the throwaway opinions of the uninformed it makes our mission even more valid.
Thanks as always for reading.
Jamie x