Channel 4’s programme wastes a chance to ask important questions about how ADHD is diagnosed and treated, instead indulging in unscientific methods and conspiracy theories
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Prof Gina Rippon is emeritus professor of cognitive neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre, Aston University
When Channel 4 announced that it would air a documentary titled The Great ADHD Myth?, an outpouring of fury followed. Despite this, I set out to approach it as a scientist – not just as a scientist whose own work has dealt with developmental disorders, but as someone who has enormous respect for the scientific process and for the importance of evidence-led debate.
Channel 4’s press release claimed the documentary sought to determine whether attention deficit hyperactivity disorder was a “genuine neurodevelopmental disorder, or a social construct”. At one level this is a brave enterprise. ADHD is recognised worldwide as a disorder, by the World Health Organization and our own NHS among others. Estimates suggest ADHD affects roughly 8% of children and adolescents and about 3% of adults worldwide. To overturn this consensus would require robust, reproducible findings capable of explaining away decades of genetic, developmental and clinical research. The press release described the documentary as “science-led”, which hinted at just such an enterprise. Was it really science-led?
Prof Gina Rippon is emeritus professor of cognitive neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre, Aston University, and the author of the books The Gendered Brain and The Lost Girls of Autism
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