Channel 4 Has Released a Documentary, The Great ADHD Myth?
The British television channel Channel 4 has released a documentary, The Great ADHD Myth? In it, the NHS psychiatrist Max Pemberton tries to establish whether ADHD is a genuine developmental disorder or a social construct, and whether children should be given psychiatric medication at all.
Perhaps the best illustration of this whole affair is the engraving after a drawing by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, "The Witch of Mallegem", also known as "The Extraction of the Stone of Madness".
The occasion for the film was the statistics showing a 200% rise in referrals for diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder between 2020 and 2025.
The British organisation ADHD has sent the channel an open letter of protest, asserting that even the wording of the title does harm. Ever since the subject appeared in the announcements, so the letter claims, people have been cancelling their assessments, parents have begun to doubt their children, and employers their staff, who have only just acquired the fashionable diagnosis.
The channel replied that the film does not deny the experience of people with the diagnosis, but sets out the positions of a number of senior medical specialists, and that editorial independence is not up for discussion.
