Author, journalist and teacher Emma Mahony along with broadcaster and media consultant Clare Catford discuss during new(ish) year resolutions and how helpful dangling year-long intentions are in front of an ADHDer’s brain.
This ADHD Awareness month, Author and Teacher Emma Mahony and Broadcaster and Podcaster Clare Catford encourage ADHD-ers to follow their gut and take a risk, after years of feeling “wrong” in a neuro-typical world. How risk-taking can be a strength of an ADHD diagnosis, not a curse. As Clare demonstrates while protesting on behalf of the Posties…
Author Emma Mahony and Broadcaster Clare Catford explore this little known aspect of ADHD where sufferers are more sensitive than others to criticism, perhaps because, by the age of 12, ADHDers receive up to 20,000 more negative comments about themselves than other children. So what effect does RSD have on friendships, relationships and self-esteem?
Author Emma Mahony and journalist Clare Catford ignore Brexit and Covid to offer their three positive intentions for this New Year. So, what would yours be?
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?"
When the Guardian writes a piece about preschoolers and ADHD, as they do here , we don’t expect it to scaremonger or to conform to prejudices around this complex neurodevelopmental disorder. We expect some breast beating from the Daily Mail or the Telegraph, but we hope for sense from the Guardian. However, while medicating preschoolers is controversial, ADHD medication (please don’t call it drugs – this not pushing recreational ecstasy tablets or making toddlers smoke joints) is immediately written off as a Bad Thing – without any explanation for what type of medication it is. Continue reading “Pre-schoolers and ADHD medication – scary? Not so much…”
Doctors are getting themselves in a right twist. In response to the previous post on the New York Times piece, Behavioural Neurologist Dr Richard Saul in Chicago has waded in, puffing his provocatively titled book called “ADHD does not Exist” (ironically reviewed by Belinda Luscombe on the same site as one of the Top Ten ADHD books here ). Dr Saul’s stance argued on the Time Magazine’s website here has a particular beef with the new diagnostic manual for mental health (DSM V), which awards ADHD to anyone displaying a minimum of five out of 18 possible symptoms.
His views will no doubt curry favour with Daily Mail readers, who do see this massive upsurge in ADHD diagnosis and medication as a problem, and also with those who feel that taking medication for ADHD is in some way “cheating” in life – whether offering extra focus at school or in the workplace (something that is shown to be not the case in the more level-headed recent Time Magazine piece by Denise Foley in another piece . Foley points out that even with meds, the attention of an ADHD child is still below the par of a “normal” child in school).
Without blamming the reader with any more Time Mag pieces to read, what Dr Saul does not to address in his piece, Continue reading “Now Dr Saul wades in with ADHD doesn’t exist”
Well, well, well. When an issue gets on to Coronation Street, the UK’s longest running soap opera on TV, or The Archers on the radio – then you know that it has made the mainstream. So it was kind of heartwarming in ADHD Awareness month, that ITV have chosen to run with an ADHD storyline. Continue reading “Coronation Street gets ADHD”
Anyone 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”
Better Late than Never 