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On both sides of the Atlantic, the number of people diagnosed with ADHD is increasing. Psychiatry UK, which provides both private and NHS-funded assessments, reports receiving around 150 ADHD referrals a day; in 2022, the organization expanded its prescribing team from ten to 60.
Why are more people being told they have ADHD? In part, it’s a course correction: Adults who have been diagnosed with depression or a personality disorder now receive a more nuanced and helpful assessment.
But there is also a more complex story to tell about the social and cultural forces at work. It’s no coincidence that diagnoses have increased along with the growth of the Internet’s attention economy—a vast infrastructure designed to capture and monetize people’s focus. Nor is it a coincidence that they have increased during the age of brutal capitalism, in which more and more people are forced into desk jobs that make huge demands on their time. In this environment, what is the “right” amount of attention and what should we focus our attention on?
In this in-depth feature article, New Statesman associate editor Sophie McBain talks to psychiatrists and patients about their experiences of treating and living with ADHD. Disorganized and distracted, can she have this state? In the absence of a precise scientific metric, what counts as disordered thinking—and what is simply a response to our always-on, multitasking lives? McBain reviews the earliest research on ADHD, its treatment with amphetamines, and explores the modern search for the root cause. If anxiety was one of the defining disorders of the early 21st century, are we now entering the decades of ADHD?
This article originally appeared in the November 4-10, 2022 issue of A new statesman magazine; you can read the text version of the article here.
Written by Sophie McBain and read by Emma Haslett.
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If you might also like to listen to Psychiatrists Who Don’t Believe in Mental Illness by Sophie McBain.
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