If I were to accept the premise of Channel 4’s documentary The Great ADHD Myth?, then I have spent years labouring under a false belief. The diagnosis I received for my so-called ADHD is apparently an arbitrary concept, invented by popular consensus and promoted by publications like 91av.

National Health Service doctor Max Pemberton presented this idea in a documentary that aired in the UK last night, and in the less than 24 hours that have passed since, many articles and columnists have commented on why it’s so offensive. While I have my own thoughts on that – and trust me, I’m offended – the most urgent issue to address is the show’s suggestion that ADHD may not be a .

One claim is that ADHD is a new condition, dreamed up to force square pegs into the round holes of modern life. This is simply not true. An early documented medical description of what we now call ADHD when from the Royal College of Physicians described people who had problems paying attention for long enough to complete tasks, saying they had “the fidgets”.

Since then, the condition has been medically described and renamed (who can forget “abnormal defect of moral control in children” in the early 1900s?) many times. While Pemberton is right to note that rates of diagnosis have soared in recent years, diagnoses in the UK are still below estimates of population prevalence from around the world. Studies that screen large groups of people for symptoms consistently put rates of ADHD in the general population .

But the results of an found that just 1 per cent of the population is diagnosed overall in England. Even among boys and young men, the group most likely to be diagnosed, the recorded rates are 2.9 per cent and 3.6 per cent, respectively. If anything, ADHD is underdiagnosed on these shores.

Autism and ADHD are on the rise due to widening diagnostic criteria

A study of 140,000 people suggests that a broadening of the diagnostic criteria for autism and ADHD explains the sharp rise in diagnoses, but that doesn’t mean too many people are being told they are autistic or have ADHD

Then there is the claim that ADHD is a social construct, not a neurodevelopmental condition. This is something Pemberton ponders after talking to neuroscientist at King’s College London. Rubia says that while there is evidence of differences between the brains of people with ADHD and neurotypical people at the group level, it isn’t possible to diagnose ADHD from a brain scan.

She is right, of course. You can’t diagnose ADHD from brain scans. The same can be said for most, if not all, psychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions. Most of these, like ADHD, are diagnosed by assessing symptoms and the effect they have on a person’s everyday ability to function. “My interview was hours long and they cherry-picked the bits that suited their push for presenting ADHD as a myth,” Rubia told 91av. “Biased programmes like this one that push their view of ADHD as a mythical entity are irresponsible and will have detrimental effects.”

Pemberton proceeds to seek out a diagnosis for ADHD via an online assessment, despite thinking he probably doesn’t have it. In reality, ADHD is diagnosed via a lengthy process that includes multiple questionnaires and an interview. To get a diagnosis, ADHD traits have to be causing significant problems in two or more settings, such as at work or with managing bills. If it doesn’t affect your life, mental health or relationships, you don’t qualify for the second D of ADHD: disorder. 

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The person carrying out his diagnosis isn’t identified. All we hear is that Pemberton apparently has ADHD and is handed a prescription for drugs that are described as “basically cocaine”.

At this point, the scaremongering about drugging our brains, particularly those of children, really begins. Yes, there is an argument that we need more for ADHD. We don’t have this yet, partly because, despite claims of the addictiveness of these medications, in the long term.

What we do have is evidence that treatments, whether drug-based or not, improve , and that , substance abuse, criminality and suicide.

Thought-provoking photographs capture what it feels like to have ADHD

These unusual images were created by visual artist Daniel Regan by submerging Polaroid photographs in his ADHD medication, to represent his experiences with the condition through art

All of which will hopefully be of some comfort to the parents of Mason, a young boy in the documentary who is taken off his medication in favour of yoga, nature walks and zero screen time. It seems to help a bit, but his schoolwork and behaviour decline, so his parents reluctantly put him back on the meds.

The documentary makes that seem like a failure. But the real failure is the way the programme-makers chose shock tactics over scientifically accurate reporting, letting Mason, and the rest of us, down.

Channel 4 declined to comment and Pemberton didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Need a listening ear? UK Samaritans: 116123 (); US Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: 988 (). Visit for services in other countries.

These dreamlike images offer a view into one person’s experience with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Last year, one week before visual artist turned 40, he received a diagnosis of ADHD. Soon after, he started taking the ADHD medication lisdexamfetamine. The drug transformed his experience of the world, helping to ease his symptoms, such as being easily distracted. “I tend to describe [ADHD] like you’re watching five projected films in your mind, all over the top of each other, and they all have their own soundtrack, and they all have their own subtitles,” says Regan.

“The medication is like turning down the volume on that, so it’s like you’re just watching one film or two films at the same time,” he says. “It means that I’m much calmer and more present.”

As Regan experienced these changes, he used a Polaroid camera to photograph himself and his surroundings while hiking in Australia. He then submerged the images in varying ratios of his ADHD medication and water for up to three months, distorting the original images. “It felt very natural for me to start processing this kind of new experience of a diagnosis, of taking medication, by engaging with the medication as a kind of creative collaborator,” he says.

In one self-portrait (main image), Regan’s body appears to be wrapped in a silk shroud. “There’s something really beautiful in that image of being held by this very sort of fragile texture and material,” he says.

Another image (above) captures greenery in the Australian bush, surrounded by bubble-like structures. “What I really like about this particular image is that it is very chaotic, so as I was describing earlier, it captures how all the dials and sliders are turned up [when experiencing symptoms of ADHD],” says Regan.

This vivid blue image (above) was originally a self-portrait, but submerging it in the medication and water has given it a “kind of biological, cellular and molecular effect, which I find interesting considering I’m putting a chemical into my body that affects the neurotransmitters in my brain”, says Regan. Lisdexamfetamine works by raising levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain.

Silhouettes of leaves and trees are enveloped by luminous yellows and greens in the final two images, above and below. The last picture, below, also reminds Regan of his late mother. “I often look at it, and I wonder what she would have made of the late diagnosis and whether she would have thought that explained previous difficulties that I’d had in the past,” says Regan.

The images, collectively titled “C₁₅H₂₅N₃O”, which is the molecular formula for the medication, will be displayed as part of Regan’s at Bethlem Gallery, London, between 22 April and 11 July 2026. His work comes amid growing awareness of ADHD. There are multiple types of ADHD, but it commonly involves persistently experiencing symptoms such as being forgetful, finding it hard to manage time or follow tasks, and being impulsive, with these .

“It’s kind of hard sometimes to describe or find the right analogies for people to get what an internal experience is like, but I think that the images represent some of that internal kind of chaos and layering,” Regan says.

More than half the claims made in popular TikTok videos about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) don’t align with clinical guidelines – which could lead to some people incorrectly self-diagnosing with ADHD.

ADHD affects of people worldwide, according to the Global Burden of Disease study. There is an active debate about whether ADHD has been underdiagnosed; some psychologists say the real proportion of people with it could be higher.

To understand social media’s influence on perceptions of ADHD, at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada, and her colleagues looked at the 100 most-viewed videos with the hashtag #ADHD on TikTok on 10 January 2023. The videos collectively had nearly 496 million views and an average of 984,000 likes.

The average video contained three claims about ADHD. The researchers presented each claim to two psychologists, who were asked whether they accurately reflected a symptom of ADHD from the DSM-5, a popular textbook used to diagnose mental disorders. Only 48.7 per cent of the claims made met that requirement. More than two-thirds of the videos attributed foibles or purported issues to ADHD that the psychologists said reflected “normal human experience”.

“We had the two experts view the top 100 most popular videos, and they found that they didn’t really match the empirical literature,” says Karasavva. “We are like, ‘OK, this is a problem’.”

The researchers asked the psychologists to rate the videos on a scale of 0 to 5. Then they asked 843 UBC students to watch the videos rated by the psychologists as the five best and five worst to explain ADHD, and then rate them. The psychologists scored the more clinically accurate videos an average of 3.6, while the students rated them 2.8. For the least-accurate videos, the students gave them an average score of 2.3, compared with 1.1 from the psychologists.

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The students were also asked questions about whether they would recommend the videos, and about their perceptions of the prevalence of ADHD in society. “The amount of time that you watched ADHD-related content on TikTok increased how likely you would be to recommend the videos, and identify them as helpful and accurate,” says Karasavva.

“One wonders how general the results are to all health content on TikTok or across the internet,” says at the University of Bath, UK. “We live in a world where we know so much about health, yet the online world is still awash with misinformation. TikTok is just reflecting that reality back to us.”

Ellis says that medical misinformation is likely to be even higher when considering mental health issues because they are diagnosed based on observations rather than more objective tests.

But banning ADHD videos on TikTok is “not helpful” – even if they are misinformative, says Karasavva. “Perhaps more experts should put out more videos, or perhaps it could also be just individual users taking it upon themselves to be a little more discerning and critical of the content they consume,” she says.

TikTok declined to comment on the specifics of the research but told 91av that it takes action against medical misinformation and that anyone looking for advice on or diagnosis of neurological conditions should contact a medical professional.

Taking small, repeated doses of the psychedelic drug LSD doesn’t alleviate ADHD symptoms any more than a placebo.

Microdosing psychedelic drugs involves taking them a few times a week in small enough doses to not experience hallucinations. Although there is little evidence backing it up, there is a pervasive idea that this can boost well-being, creativity and focus. And some studies have shown that people who microdose as a way of treating ADHD do report symptoms improving, but these studies were observational and relied on self-reported data.

To test the drugs’ effects on ADHD more rigorously, at the University of Basel in Switzerland and his colleagues conducted the first ever randomised controlled trial of LSD microdosing for ADHD. They recruited 53 adults living in the Netherlands or Switzerland who were diagnosed with ADHD and experienced moderate to severe symptoms. Twenty-seven of the participants took a 20-microgram dose of LSD twice a week – on the higher end of microdoses, but still only about a fifth of a standard dose – while the rest were given a placebo.

ADHD symptoms were assessed at the start of the study and six weeks later using a 54-point scale, where higher scores indicated more severe symptoms. On average, scores decreased by about 7 points in participants taking LSD and nearly 9 points in those given a placebo.  This isn’t a significant difference, suggesting that LSD is no better than a placebo at improving ADHD symptoms, says Liechti.

However, it could be that the dosage wasn’t right for treating ADHD, he says. LSD may also need to be taken daily to experience a decrease in symptoms, similar to how current ADHD medications works, says at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“We still need to see whether an acute dose – meaning while the drug is in your body – does that have any reduction in symptoms?” says Murray. “That is kind of the first step. And if it doesn’t, then you almost don’t even have to ask whether there is any enduring change.”