Update on Channel 4's: The Great ADHD Myth?

In this update to last week’s episode,  Dr Alex reflects on the response to Channel 4’s The Great ADHD Myth? and on an important new development. He also discusses what that means for the documentary, the wider ADHD debate, and the importance of discussing complex mental health issues without stigma, contempt or oversimplification.

Presented by Dr. Alex Curmi. Dr. Alex is a consultant psychiatrist and a UKCP registered psychotherapist. Website: alexcurmitherapy.com

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Transcript

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One really interesting update that has come out since the release of the documentary last week is one of the lead experts. So she has since come out and said that her views and her interviews for the documentary were actually misrepresented. I wanted to make this video as a brief update to the last podcast I released, all about the new documentary, The Great ADHD Myth, which came out last week. For those of you who don't know me, I'm a psychiatrist and a psychotherapist. I've worked with all kinds of mental health conditions, including ADHD. I posted a podcast discussing that documentary, and in the ways I think it packaged the argument, you know, setting up a kind of false dichotomy and not really giving justice to all sides of the debate. And I just wanted to share some thoughts in the aftermath of that podcast. So that episode was actually one of the fastest growing episodes we've ever had. And I think it's not to do with me, but rather to do with how important this issue is to a lot of people and people really who are all on all sides to the debate. The podcast got tons of comments on YouTube. So if you're interested in engaging in that discussion, there's a big discussion happening in the comment section of that podcast, and you'll see again lots of different opinions. I want to say thanks to everyone responding thoughtfully again on different sides of the debate. You can also see so much strong emotion and frankly so much vitriol and quite a lot of disdain. And especially I felt a lot of disdain towards people who have uh ADHD seeking treatment and a lot of disdain towards mental health professionals who work with ADHD. And again, it goes to show what a hot button this issue this is, but on a deeper level, it also shows to me at least how much it is a part of the human condition that when we see people not quite managing to do things we feel they should and asking for help, we have a tendency to morally judge them. So we morally judge people when they have things like ADHD. Often we judge people when they have other forms of mental health issues like depression. We judge people for things like being overweight or obesity. It's such a such an embedded part of our nature to make judgments about people and to assume that people are just trying to find the easy way out, even when they're just asking for help. So I think this is a part of being human that's very much surfacing in this debate, and you see it in lots of different debates, and I think it's something really worth talking about and understanding. And my question is: can we have this debate and debates like this without resorting to hate, without resorting to disdain, uh, demeaning people? I think this is going to be so important as we ultimately try and unravel complex issues like this. Uh, there was a really interesting debate on another YouTube channel called Teacher Talk Radio, and that had experts again from different sides of the discussion. That had Philip Asherson, one of the experts who I really thought should have been in the documentary. It had people like Joanna Moncrieve, uh, the psychologist Lucy Johnstone, who was also in the documentary, and I thought that was a really interesting debate. So that's another video worth checking out if you want to learn more about the different sides of this ADHD debate. I think one really interesting update that has come out since the release of the documentary last week is one of the lead experts on the documentary, the great ADHD myth, Professor Katya Rubia, and she's an expert in neuroimaging. So she has since come out and said that her views and her interviews for the documentary were actually misrepresented. So this was reported in multiple places, including a Guardian article, which I will link in the description. She said, quote, I agreed to take part in this documentary because I knew it was aiming to show ADHD was a myth, and I wanted to provide an alternative view, but they cherry-picked, largely misrepresented, truncated, and presented my comments out of context to make them fit into their narrative. Biased programs like this one that push their view of ADHD as a mythical entity are irresponsible and will have detrimental effects, in particular at a time in our society where mental health conditions are escalating and where there is an urgent need for early diagnosis and early treatment to prevent further damage down the line. Lastly, she went on to say parents of children with ADHD may take their children off medication as seen on the program, which could potentially lead to an increase of the risk of longer-term adverse outcomes of untreated ADHD, such as increased anxiety and depression, lower self-esteem, greater risk of substance abuse, suicide, more antisocial behavior, poorer academic achievement, and reduced employment prospects later in life. Now, as I said in the podcast that came out last week, I think a lot of the questions that the documentary raised are important and valid questions, but I disagreed a lot with how the whole program was presented and packaged. I'm now learning about this that one of the main experts' views were edited and misrepresented. I think from a journalistic standpoint, that's inexcusable. It's one thing to have experts that are somewhat unbalanced. It's quite another thing to have an expert that's disagreeing with you who you edit to make it fit the narrative of the documentary that you're making. Again, I'm all up for the questions and the skepticism and the scrutiny, but I think this is journalistically unacceptable. I wouldn't be surprised if, given these recent revelations about Dr. Arubia, that perhaps some sort of retraction might be in the works. In the meantime, you have other articles coming out. So an article, for example, that came out in The Spectator today says last week, the Channel 4 documentary, The Great ADHD myth, took a long overdue look at ADHD. The program has since faced a significant backlash online and a tidal wave of complaints to Ofcom. Perhaps this says more about ADHD than it does about Channel 4. Because as the program revealed, many scientists now see the condition as more of a social construct or identity marker than a real illness. And this is written by Alistair Morty. So again, we're seeing when you make a documentary that's unbalanced and in this case even misrepresenting the views of your experts, you start to see the run-on effects of that. And you start to see other pieces of media coming out that's just taking the stuff presented in the documentary as truth. And I think this is why it's so important if you're making media, if you're making content about complicated issues like ADHD, to take it really seriously and take balanced views. And the last thing I'm gonna say is there will be an instinct to have, just like there's instinct to have hate and disdain towards people with ADHD from a lot of people, and that is a form of prejudice in my view. There's gonna be a big instinct to have a lot of hatred and disdain, perhaps, towards people who made or were involved in this documentary. And just like with the other side, I think we have to let go of that instinct. I think what we have to do is respond to bad arguments, unbalanced views with better arguments. That's the only way forward, in my view. I hope you found this update on this situation and this ongoing debate useful as always. It would be really nice to hear your ongoing feedback. The YouTube comment section is the best place to get to us, and I try and respond to as much feedback as I can. If you like this video, do like and subscribe. If you're not listening on YouTube, do consider listening on YouTube. If you want to listen on Apple and Spotify, do leave us a review or a rating there. In the meantime, thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you here next time.