An honest review of Channel 4’s “The Great ADHD Myth?”

I’m going to be completely honest about how I felt after the “The Great ADHD Myth?” aired.

As an ADHD coach and TV professional this programme probably affected me more strongly than it did others.

I ended up in quite a low place after constantly scrolling and looking at the clips, the quotes, the charities issuing statements and the people I respect discussing it. It was absolutely everywhere but it overwhelmed me in a way I hadn’t realised it would.  I have a strong sense of justice, always have, and so listening to everything made me feel genuinely upset for both my clients and the wider ADHD community.  So I decided to wait a while to watch this show, hoping to come to it with an open mind.

What was very clear was that the show instantly started with its conclusion already written. There was a very clear shape from the first few minutes with the core of it being Dr Max Pemberton’s own scepticism.  Every contributor and every scene pushed towards that outcome with biased experts rather than a true search of the truth.

That’s not how a good documentary is supposed to work; you should be given the opportunity to listen to multiple views and draw your own conclusions.

Since it aired, one of the professionals who took part, Professor Katya Rubia of King’s College, London, has come forward to say her contribution was edited in a way that pulled her words out of their original context.  She’s described her interview as hours long, which is normal in the TV world, but what isn’t normal is to only use fragments that back a predefined narrative. You have to understand what is being said and make sure that it is represented fairly. That hasn’t happened here.

She isn’t alone in raising concerns either. Other researchers in the field, including Professor Anita Thapar, have since said the programme failed to properly draw on clinical experts in ADHD research at all, meaning this show is being called out by the very field it claimed to be interrogating.

During the show, the one child who went through the programme’s “experiment,”  taken off his medication and monitored, was a ten year old white boy. I honestly felt like I’d been pulled straight back to the earliest days of how ADHD was understood, when it was seen as something that only happened to young boys who couldn’t sit still in a classroom.

The show failed to bring up any discussion of how ADHD shows up in girls and women, so often missed or misread for years because it doesn’t look the same as it does in a ten year old boy. If the discussion isn’t inclusive it’s pointless.

Where was any acknowledgement of how ADHD presents differently across cultures, or how access to diagnosis and understanding varies so much depending on who you are and where you’re from?

Using one child’s story to stand in for millions of very different experiences is not evidence of anything.

What made it worse was that buried right at the end, in the credits it said that the boy went back on his medication, and his schoolwork improved. The programme’s own experiment disproved the very conclusion it spent an hour building towards, and they aired it anyway. There was no discussion about how an easier path through school life can lead to a more positive outcome later in life.

The show used the brain scan to justify its story. Just because there is the absence of a single definitive MRI marker doesn’t mean it is proof that ADHD isn’t real. Almost no psychiatric diagnosis can be confirmed by one scan on one individual. This isn’t unique to ADHD, it’s how diagnosis works for all conditions that are a bit more complex and made up of lots of contributing factors. Research in this area involves so many variables, family history, environment, comorbid conditions, individual variation, for a single scan or a single child to prove anything. However, at group level, it has been found that statistical differences in the brain do exist.

Ultimately I came away from the programme thinking about what a wasted opportunity it was.  Yes, we do need to look at how we are diagnosed and there should be a conversation about that, but there’s also so much genuinely exciting research that could’ve been explored instead. 

• There’s fascinating recent work using brain scans to map it more precisely and researchers have identified distinct neurological subtypes within ADHD itself, using data from thousands of adolescents.

• There’s a huge body of pooled genetic research, drawing on millions of participants across multiple studies, that consistently points to ADHD being one of the most heritable conditions in psychiatry.

• There’s promising early work looking at whether certain brain activity patterns in children with ADHD might be measurable and, in time, responsive to non-invasive intervention. 

I have noticed something since the show was aired too: I am seeing far more trolling, indeed I have my very own troll, someone who is framing ADHD as something invented by the pharmaceutical industry rather than a genuine neurodevelopmental condition. I feel that this kind of voice has now felt emboldened since the title “The Great ADHD Myth?” was shared.

On some publications I follow, I’ve seen people laughing, treating the programme as if it’s settled the argument once and for all. It reminds me, in an uncomfortable way, of how certain political figures have made it feel more socially acceptable for people to say unkind things about race and about women. I feel like this show gives permission to not have to keep these views to themselves and will say it without any scientific background. In fact, the person trolling me cited his arguments with economics magazines with someone’s opinion, rather than carefully peer reviewed scientific papers, of which there are a plenty.

Somewhere in amongst the click bait, there were some genuinely good points peeking from behind the scenes. These talking points were there, even though they were largely ignored or poorly made:

• We should be looking properly at how our children are coping in school, and putting real measures in place for the ones who simply can’t sit at a desk for six hours a day.

• We should be pouring far more money into research on medication, into understanding ADHD better rather than questioning whether it should exist at all.

• We should be talking about screen time, and about getting outdoors more, because both of those things genuinely help. It’s worth mentioning that this is an easy thing to recommend when you have green space on your doorstep. A serious programme would have looked at this, rather than treating it as a simple fix available to everyone.

One final thing I wanted to say is that, as an Edit Producer, I know that a programme like this doesn’t get aired without multiple people getting involved. You cut the show, then its watched by the Executive Producer at the production company (Minnow Films, in this case) who comes back with several rounds of notes and changes before anything moves further. After that, it goes to the broadcaster, Channel 4, who have the final say on what the finished programme actually looks like. So this isn’t accidental or the work of one person acting alone. Every piece of context left out has been seen, discussed, and approved by people at every stage of that chain. If contributors’ words ended up meaning something different from what they actually said, that was signed off by people whose job it was to prevent it.

If you watched it and it left you feeling something, whether that’s anger, exhaustion, or being upset: I hear you! Please reach out to me, or comment below.

With all of the things I have seen in this show – the preconceived narrative, the selectively edited testimony, the single unrepresentative case study standing in for millions of people, the misuse of brain scan evidence, and the lack of any genuine opposing voice given equal weight – I think this programme has earned more than just criticism: I think it warrants a formal apology and a correction from Channel 4!

That is not a conclusion I’ve come to lightly. I’ve worked in this industry for over twenty years. This is the first time in my life I’ve felt strongly enough to complain to Ofcom myself.

If you feel the same way, ADHD UK has made it straightforward to add your voice through their Complain to Ofcom page. Don’t be silenced! Make your voice heard, and join the conversation!