- I somehow hoped that if I get an ADHD diagnosis, it wasn't my fault, but it was synapses or something else, says Carina Bergfeldt in the SVT series "Alla mina letterer".
- Finally I get to be myself, says ten-year-old Mason in the TV program "The great adhd-myth?" on UK Channel 4, when he hasn't taken his adhd medication for three weeks.
The TV programs premiered in the same week in August, both deal with ADHD, and in both the viewer gets to follow the presenter â Carina Bergfeldt in SVT and the psychiatrist Max Pemberton in Channel 4 â as they conduct an investigation and receive an ADHD diagnosis. But there the similarities end. Carina Bergfeldt is relieved and says she feels "a sadness over lost years" when she thinks about the time when she didn't know she had ADHD. Max Pemberton, on the other hand, does not agree at all with his diagnosis.
- There is literally nothing, no part of my life that is disabled, and no part of the world I live in where I have a disability, he says.
Both television programs have received criticism for being one-sided and unscientific and for a lack of critical voices against the thesis the program promotes.
"All My Letters" has been accused of being too uncritical of ADHD medication. "The great ADHD myth?" accused instead of being too negative about the drugs. The program follows ten-year-old Mason who, for six weeks, stops his medication and at the same time refrains from screens and sweets and is allowed to start yoga and spend more time in nature. The family then decides to continue without medication for Mason, as he is happier, funnier and "his true personality" is allowed to emerge. Only in the end credits does the viewer learn that two months later the mother let the boy start the drugs again, as the school has not functioned without them.
Critics have pointed out that it is not possible to draw any general conclusions about adhd drugs from the individual example, among other things because Mason also changes his lifestyle, and also has to stop the medication in front of a television camera.
- Claiming that ADHD medication is harmful and does not help, based on an uncontrolled and completely unscientific experiment on a single child, contradicts solid evidence that ADHD medications can be linked to longer life expectancy and to, among other things, a reduced risk of suicide, says Rachel Moseley, leader of psychology research at the University of Bournemouth in the UK in a comment.
Paul Lichtenstein, professor of medical epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, has some objections to the SVT series.
- The biggest problem is that an ADHD diagnosis is described as a fixed condition that is objectively verifiable. It will be problematic, I think, he says.
Psychiatrists can come to different conclusions about whether a person has ADHD or not, he believes.
- Like everything else in our world, there are personality traits and behaviors that we all have more or less of, and to varying degrees in different contexts. I don't think that comes across in the program.
The thesis of the British program is instead that the diagnosis of ADHD is only a social construction. Paul Lichtenstein can partially agree with that.
- Sometimes I say in my lectures that ADHD does not exist. On the other hand, I always add "... but it's the best we have today". We have created contexts in our modern society that make it more difficult for people who have these personality traits, he says.
But that does not mean that we should stop using the diagnosis or stop prescribing medicines, he believes.
- It would be wonderful if we could change the context. But we cannot demand that children with problems today wait for that, and for us to have solved the school's problems. It is unrealistic.
There are both children and adults who have such great problems with planning, organization and impulse control that they have difficulty functioning. This year, Paul Lichtenstein and his colleagues showed that people who take medication for their ADHD have a significantly lower risk of suicide attempts, substance abuse and crime, compared to those who do not.
- It is clear that the medicines help some people. Then it becomes problematic that for political reasons one should try to push aside that knowledge, and say that since we cannot fully define ADHD, it does not exist.
At the same time, they have also shown that children born in December are more likely to receive an ADHD diagnosis than those born at the beginning of the year.
- It does not mean that you have a greater chance of getting ADHD if you were born in December, but that you have a worse chance of coping with school as it looks today, says Paul Lichtenstein.
The SVT series could lead to more people with problems seeking and receiving help.
- It helped Carina Bergfeldt to have a more structured existence. And that is positive. The negative is if you see ADHD as a simple explanation that removes responsibility from the individual.
