A presenter on the BBC’s flagship “Today Programme” has just blithely dismissed ADHD as being the fault of teachers that can’t keep discipline.
We would like to point out to the BBC that this was not presented with any evidence whatever and is quite simply ‘journalism’ of a very poor standard. There is a huge amount of scientific evidence for ADHD, a lot mentioned on this blog in previous posts. But, worse than just poor journalism, the effect that such comments on a supposedly serious programme have is to foster an opinion that there is no such thing as ADHD and thus will lead to the harassment and bullying of people that suffer it. For shame ‘Today’.
We await a response.
AADD-UK
Acharnians
adhdbrighton
aethelredtheunready
AADD-UK 
Sue OS, I kind of understand where this concern of YOURS, that some children or adult might not have ADHD but are just the product of a bad environment, comes from. However, I think it is a very weak argument that does not contribute to the debate, because if someone claims to have ADHD it means that they must been diagnosed by a specialist doctor which is not a naive person with no skills, but a doctor who studied a lot to understand the condition. People diagnosed with ADHD actually waited about 6 months (UK) to see a very well paid specialist psychiatrist which I guess have lots of experience doing their job, they see patterns and these patterns are very defined.
In contrast, people who read an article on a homeopathy website that sells overpriced fish oil and think that they are sudden specialists, are in fact just “contributing” with an uneducated opinion. It is just the journalist’s opinion, and it wastes professional people’s time. Unfortunately lots of uneducated, time wasters are in the government and have influence to decide what professionals should be deciding. What ADHD is or not should be decided by professionals, not politicians or people with opinions. Everybody is entitled to have an opinion, but what about asking the professionals first and actually understanding the research data to start with? Opening our mouths just because we are allowed to have an opinion does not solve problems.
Posted by Dani | March 13, 2015, 11:35 am