Book reviews for Adult ADHD books

As well as posting a recent review of my own book Better Late Than Never on adult ADHD – I wanted to highly recommend a fantastic new book out by Kat Brown called “It’s Not a Bloody Trend!” (love that title). It launched this February, and I have already finished it because it is a galloping and brilliant piece of writing. It successfully brings together different voices as well as Kat’s own nuanced but never sorry-for-herself exploration of her own ADHD. Even when she described her nickname as “Robogob” at school, which made me drop the book with a cruel hoot, she is measured in her approach in how neurodiversity has affected her life.

The research that has gone into the book is properly thorough, and she has got a good variety of people involved from the esteemed CEO of the ADHD Foundation Dr Tony Lloyd to the average Joe, and there are plenty of interviews so everyone’s experience is valid.

Anyone who is exploring their own ADHD would do well to buy this, because it genuinely adds to the sum of human understanding on this complex neurological difference, and my link above is to the Bookshop.org because I don’t use Amazon (they don’t pay tax in this country and have devastated sales in High Street Bookshops). Copies bought through Bookshop.org donate to a fund for independent booksellers, and over £3.4m has been donated to date through them.

ADHD Awareness month October 2023 – how was it for you?

Journalist Emma Mahony and Broadcaster Clare Catford look back at the close of October ADHD awareness month and talk about how to have a “Medication Vacation” following yesterday’s piece in the Sunday Times – detailing how roughly 200,000 patients are experiencing a shortage in their ADHD medication supply, which could last till Christmas. GPs have been told not to start new patients on any medication during the shortage. How can you get extra support at work being “out” about your ADHD?

Hyperfocus – confused? You will be…

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Rory Bremner – ADHDer & Patron of ADHD foundation

 Hyperfocus

For all that scattered attention, mindwandering, forgetfulness and disorganization there is an even more confusing aspect to ADHD that is often cited as evidence for why the person can’t have it at all. Hyperfocus, the ability to lose time and be completely absorbed by some interesting occupation, and interesting is the crucial word here, seems to suggest that the adhder can pay attention when it suits them.

Continue reading “Hyperfocus – confused? You will be…”

ADHD is real – so why question it?

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The British ADHD organization – ADDISS – ran a campaign a few years ago in ADHD awareness week (this year happening on October 14 ) called “ADHD IS real”. I can’t think of many Awareness weeks that have to focus on the fact that the condition they are campaigning about actually exists.

Few mental health issues seem to suffer from the same stigma as ADHD. When I asked the head of the UK ADDISS, Andrea Bilbow OBE, to explain to me why I could only find well-funded parenting groups for Autism and Aspergers in my area, and nothing for ADHD, she explained: “Autism has the Aaahh factor, people feel sorry for the sufferers or carers. ADHD is just seen as annoying”.

 Continue reading "ADHD is real – so why question it?" 

Mastering ADHD for adults – Dr Hallowell’s Game-changing Workshop in London on 30 September

adhdcartoonAnyone who has been touched by ADHD considers US-based Dr Hallowell as something of a guru. And, on the eve of ADHD Awareness month, the Crossley Family managed to persuade him across the pond to talk to those affected by ADHD in the UK. An author of 20 books, a self-professed ADHDer himself, with dyslexia, and a father to two ADHD boys – Ned Hallowell also runs a psychiatry practice in New York, and advocates what he calls a “strength-based” or positive approach to the condition.

At 64, he has some 25 years of experience under his belt, he refuses to see the complex neurological “disorder” as a disability – instead insisting that if he had a choice to have ADHD or not have it, then he’d keep it. Despite dishing out scripts for medication Continue reading “Mastering ADHD for adults – Dr Hallowell’s Game-changing Workshop in London on 30 September”