Thank you to Emily in the comments section on this piece in the Daily Mail a few days ago. Emily points out that ADHDers have a hard enough time being believed for this condition, without the gleeful note of scepticism raised in the Mail every time the latest study on ADHD appears.
This one from Taiwan, involving just under 400,000 school children entering school in the Far East, implies that the higher percentage of August babies to September babies carrying an ADHD diagnosis shows that ADHD is just down to immature behaviour.
As Emily in the comments section points out, the statistical difference 1.8% for September babies too 2.9% for August babies is not that great anyway, and even the article points out that it is perhaps not that significant. “So why write the article then?”, asks Emily.
Here, here. And when you consider that ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder, and some children – around a third – are said to grow out of it, perhaps even a whole year in age can make a difference when there is a borderline diagnosis for a child who may then grow out of it (particularly if helped with tools for keeping on track in school while on medication).
Particularly malevolent is when the Daily Mail uses words to describe the increase in prescriptions for children’s ADHD medication as having “soared” since the 1990s. This “soaring” statistic is better explained by a simple increase in diagnosis- and because at last, slowly, there is a better awareness of the symptoms and treatment for the condition.
This is to be celebrated. But the Daily Mail seems to want to blame the condition on poor parenting. Do other mental health issues have this moral stigmatising?
Better Late than Never 