After the revelation, with medication and cognitive behavioural therapy prescribed, I was all set to turn my life around. What I wasn’t ready for was the response from my family, who initially cast doubt on my diagnosis. ‘It makes no sense that you make films with a Herculean determination but you can’t lift a finger to fill in a tax return,’ loved ones goaded me. It didn’t make sense to me either. The reality was that nobody had any real sympathy for me and I couldn’t blame them: everything about the disorder I was lumbered with for life was contradictory and topsy-turvy. The result was that after the initial elation at discovering an answer to why I had lived life full-throttle and in utter chaos, I was left feeling incredibly alone, brimming with shame at the workings of my mind.

In the midst of lockdown gloom last year, however, it became clear that I was not alone. Forced into their homes, with no escape from their own behaviour, many people began to question whether they, too, might be suffering with ADHD. In this country, Google searches for the question ‘Do I have ADHD?’ have nearly doubled every year since 2018; so prevalent was the question on social media during the pandemic that it seemed to give ‘Do I have Covid?’ a run for its money. TikTok clips about ADHD went viral, accumulating billions of hits and millions of likes.

This was encouraging news. For years there has been a widespread dismissive attitude towards the disorder – down in part to the response to a book by behavioural neurologist Richard Saul entitled ADHD Does Not Exist. Its publication in 2014 chimed with fears of an ADHD ‘epidemic’ and a statistical rise in offering young children medication, with anxiety around medicating childhood and playing into the hands of ‘big pharma’. ADHD, screamed the likes of certain tabloid newspapers, was just an excuse for bad behaviour and was all down to bad parenting.

Nevertheless, social media seemed to be offering a different perspective. So I ventured on to TikTok myself, to see what all the fuss was about.

The rise of ADHD awareness on social media 

The first clip I saw was ‘The Difference Between an ADHD “Actor” and a Person Who Truly Has It’, an engaging minute-long post taking aim at stereotypes and conveying the anxious, whirring inner chatter of an ADHD brain, from @tomboymani, a young Hawaiian with almost 350,000 followers.

I came across the American psychiatrist Dr Edward Hallowell, who has ADHD himself. Hallowell’s ‘Ned Talks’ include nuggets of advice on everything from dealing with negative thoughts to remembering to have breakfast, along with words of affirmation and encouragement. ‘ADHD is like having a Ferrari brain with bicycle brakes,’ he tells his 100,000 followers with infectious enthusiasm. ‘Strengthen the brakes and you have a champion!’

Next came videos about ADHD in girls, which brought tears. I wanted to hug my younger self: the schoolgirl who swung from dreaminess, scattered thinking and introversion – no remote control for the bank of television channels constantly vying for attention in my mind – to chattiness, with a weakness for distraction and distracting everyone around her. I shivered when I recalled the times my impulsiveness had driven me to lay sticky fingers on items in shops when no one was looking, my hands pouncing on anything – and later anyone – that took my fancy.

After going down the TikTok rabbit hole, I was able to name the extreme emotional pain I had experienced throughout my life. Rejection sensitive dysphoria is a common symptom of ADHD that can imitate mood disorders, and involve suicidal ideation and feelings of anger. A massive apology for all the blows I had inflicted was owed to my long-suffering family and husband. If only I, my parents and my teachers had had the benefit of these resources in the 1980s. I thought of all the young girls (in the US, for example, boys are more than twice as likely to be diagnosed; US research also shows children from ethnic minorities are far more at risk of going undiagnosed) and the estimated one per cent of women believed to be living with undiagnosed ADHD in the UK. How many were quietly despairing? Research suggests that adults with ADHD are far more likely to have attempted to take their own lives.

Identifying with a video on TikTok is only the tip of the iceberg. It’s when you actually start to seek help that reality bites.

Identifying the condition in children

If you’re an adult wanting to get an assessment for yourself or one for your child – incidentally, 80 per cent of cases are inherited from one or both parents – you can be waiting as long as seven years. Numerous parents (with children in both state and private education) have told me that when they mentioned they suspected their son or daughter had the condition, their suspicions were met by the child’s school at best with wariness, at worst with a reluctance even to discuss it, teachers having been cautioned by those in authority against any labelling of a child, especially one of primary school age.

One mother I spoke to told me that she was at her wits’ end because of the lack of understanding shown by teachers at her son’s school. ‘I just can’t believe that it is never talked about. In their weekly obligatory PSHE [personal, social, health and economic] lesson they learn all about respecting each other’s religious beliefs but nothing about respecting the differences in how their brains function. They should be learning the basics of dyslexia, autism and ADHD.’

Many psychiatrists, including my own, are frustrated by this attitude too. ‘It is very important that ADHD is addressed before it destroys a child’s self-esteem and has a negative impact on their entire experience of and performance at school,’ Dr Mike McPhillips told me. It is estimated that those with ADHD receive 20,000 negative messages by age 10 – so of course they’re bound to see themselves as fundamentally different and flawed (just as I did). 

Once ADHD is formally diagnosed a child can get extra support in the classroom, equipped with strategies and tools to regulate their attention and motivation, from discreet ‘fidget strips’ (pieces of velvet or scratchy fabric stuck under desks to entertain restless hands) to regular movement breaks. A formal diagnosis may also mean a child is considered eligible for extra time in exams.

It is also only in being professionally diagnosed, of course, that a child can access the stimulant medication that years of studies have shown effectively and safely treats the disorder.