Prison, ADHD, and The Mental Health Scandal…

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Untreated ADHD for teenagers that don’t have much support (or even a diagnosis) often ends in teen pregnancy for girls, and juvenile delinquency for boys. Undiagnosed, these young kids often seek thrills and danger, and go off the rails, attracted to the mad, bad and dangerous, ending up in prison.

The Guardian piece this weekend documents how the failure of mental health services to identify or deal with the problem early  on is leading to bedlam in prisons, as more and more young offenders are ending up inside without support for their mental health issues. Around 10% of prisoners, 8,000 offenders, are in the nick with serious mental problems, with around 20 per cent having ADHD, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or autism. All of these conditions are treatable, with medication and behavioural support, and all it takes is a little bit of energy and focus on the individual.

The younger they are treated, the more responsive they are. However, up until 2006, ADHD wasn’t even recognised by the NHS as existing in adults, once children with the condition reached 18 all support vanished. While ADHD in adults is now being slowly recognised, it still takes expert psychiatrists to adjust medication and treat this complex neurological disability.

While the Guardian piece concentrates on the really extreme mental health cases, with inmates who turn to suicide, or murdering their fellow inmates, you can’t help feeling that the headline grabbing cases are just the tip of the iceberg. How many of these bored, frustrated, young offenders shouldn’t be in there at all?

Two charities I am supporting with a bit of time, rather than money is Key4Life and Fine Cell Work . The former is a new charity, which gives young offenders on the outside some intense support to rebuild their life and find work, adopting positive strategies away from the gang culture. The other provides inmates with a sense of purpose and something to do when they are banged up for 18 hours, fingers twitching over the needlework, some of them going on to stitch their way to earning thousands of pounds and saving the money for the outside.

I hope that by the time my teenage ADHDer reaches my age, we will see mental health for what it is. Something that needs support, not punishment.

Until then, we languish in the Victorian era, and as the Guardian headline says: “We are recreating Bedlam”.

Why is Negative So Much More Attractive than Being Positive?

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ImageWhy is Negative So Much More Attractive than Being Positive?

I’ve written on this blog before about Kevin Roberts being the poster boy for ADHD and now have completed his rather good book – Movers, Dreamers and Risk-Takers, Unlocking the Power of ADHD. I like it, ironically, because he is so positive about the whole ADHD issue, something that the Neuroscientists like Russell Barklay are not (“It’s a Neurodisability, why dress it up as anything else?”)

One of the more fascinating nuggets to emerge from this book is that ADHDers create negative dynamics in many areas of their lives because “negative information and stimulation weigh more heavily on the brain than positive information and stimulation, thus creating brain activity”*.

As Roberts writes: “I have come to the inescapable conclusion that I feel more alive when I am being negative. Opposing something gives me more juice than supporting it. We ADHDers create negative dynamics in many areas of our lives… Continue reading “Why is Negative So Much More Attractive than Being Positive?” →

ADDISS International Conference in Liverpool – Well Worth the Schlep

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A lot could be said about the two days spent in the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool, along with a hundred or more ADHDers, all twitching to get out of their seats.

The atmosphere reminded me of those signs in the pub above the Optics saying: “You don’t have to be mad to work here… but it helps”. There was a frenetic, hyperkenetic pace to the whole affair, and any speaker not an ADHDer, of which there were only a few, paid for the slowness of their delivery with the comings and goings of the participants. They weren’t so much booed off, as bored off. Anything went at this conference, and usually it was people leaving the room. Continue reading “ADDISS International Conference in Liverpool – Well Worth the Schlep” →

Kevin Roberts – Author of Cyber Junkie and Movers, Dreamers and Risk Takers

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Kevin Roberts - Author of Cyberjunkie and Movers Dreamers and Risk takers

Kevin Roberts, Author and ADHDer, came over from the States to give a couple of talks at the ADHD international Conference in Liverpool – 10 to 12 October 2013. He is co-founder of The Empower ADD project and a member of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels. Officially or unofficially, he became the Master of Ceremonies of the occasion because his mixture of showmanship, humour, positivity and love of interruptions glued the event together. He’s the unoffical Poster Boy for ADHD, because he believe – above all – that teaching people with ADHD to find the fun in life provides a powerful means to success.

From Concerta via Ritalin to Elvanse & Strattera, a month’s journey in meds

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UnknownI wonder how families who have only the NHS to fare cope when it comes to “Child and Adolescent Mental Health“?  Our initial meeting with the NHS pyschiatrist left me holding some Concerta 12-hour stimulant medication – and a date for a follow up meeting IN A MONTH. A Month was too long, too long by 28 days almost, as the daily rollercoaster of keeping our son on track began. Continue reading “From Concerta via Ritalin to Elvanse & Strattera, a month’s journey in meds” →

Countdown to Meds for my 12 year old ADDer

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IMG_0671On Tuesday, we give up with the year’s experiment of keeping our ADHD  son unmedicated, and head for the pharmacy. Despite the promises of the NHS with their NICE guidelines suggesting Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Social Skills training, group and individual therapy and parenting classes – it’s clear that NONE of it is available. There is only medication on the NHS, and the rest is down to you the parents to sort. Mental health is appalling in the UK, we just don’t get it.

Of course medication is no silver bullet, I have read too many chat room posts and message boards where adult ADDers talk Ritalin, Strattera, Concerta, Medikenet, dosages, availability – like drug addicts swapping tips. It may or may not work, but the alternative (nothing) doesn’t work either. Continue reading “Countdown to Meds for my 12 year old ADDer” →

ADD kids are hunters, the rest are farmers

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Childrearing in traditional societies – a lesson for ADD parents

For a year since my 12 year old son was diagnosed with ADHD, I’ve been trying to get hold of the Hunter school in Massachussetts. Recommended by a friend in the States, it’s known for its alternative ways of schooling children with ADD, I have a hunch it might help me find some behavioural strategies that just aren’t available here in the UK. It’s so called, because it believes ADD kids are genetic throwbacks to a time when we were “hunters”, alert to all sounds in the jungle (have I lost you already?), as opposed to our so-called civilised society where we have become “farmers”, able to tend to our corner of the world by sitting still and waiting for the crops to grow. This link to a Radio 4 programme today looks at childrearing strategies in “Hunter” tribes in Papua New Guinea, as opposed to childrearing strategies in the Western world. The programme speaks to parents of ADHD children. Click the letter “C” in the title to listen to the clip.