Proud to have co-authered this with @joannamoncrieff @JDaviesPhD & Lucy Johnstone. Calling ADHD a ‘myth’ is misleading. But declaring it simply ‘real’, as though its scientific status were settled, is even more so. Read why in our article for @bmj: bmj.com/content/394/bmj-2026…

Autism and ADHD (like other psychiatric diagnoses) are descriptive categories, which don't pick out things that people "have". This is the error of refication. They didn’t discover that "they" can “coexist”; they conceded that people don’t fall neatly into either category.

Delighted to see @dropthedisorder returning for another festival! I've had the pleasure of speaking at one of their previous events and have long admired the important work they do on challenging psychiatric dominance and promoting richer conversations about psychological distress and impairment. Thoroughly recommend 👇 eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-disorde…

I would only add that "it's a bit of everything" is even more dumb.

Here, in the Fonagy report (p. 258), there seems to be the clear implication—in the example of ADHD diagnoses—that some are misattributing their experiences or having their experiences misattributed to neurodevelopmental conditions.

Partly the fault of the report’s own obfuscation, but this is not what the Fonagy report found. For autism among young people, it found: Estimated population prevalence: 1.2%. Recorded diagnoses: 6–11-year-olds: 4.58% 2–17-year-olds: 4.06% (These recorded-diagnosis figures exclude waiting lists.) The report itself questions the "catch-up" explanation: “If administrative prevalence were simply converging with underlying population prevalence, rates would be expected gradually to stabilise. Instead, recorded diagnoses and demand for assessment continue to rise rapidly.” It stops short of calling this overdiagnosis—though there is no other metric provided other than these rates through which that could be established—but “we are just diagnosing those who have been missed” is plainly not its conclusion.

Here is the passage (p. 11) in the Fonagy report that defines diagnostic rates of ADHD & autism. Call me pedantic, but it seems fairly clear to me that it *is* saying that overdiagnosis is occurring—just not "at scale", i.e., not in every demographic. Population prevalence is the estimated proportion of people who should meet diagnostic criteria (per the psychiatric model); administrative prevalence is the proportion actually recorded as having the diagnosis. Notwithstanding the age of the data used (which was, it must be said, known before any investigation into "overdiagnosis" took place and is only 9 years old), it is saying that in some demographics (e.g., autism ages 7-17) there is an excess of administrative diagnosis, which isn't explained by a convergence with population prevalence—in other words, overdiagnosis (in this case, 4-fold higher). gov.uk/government/publicatio…

This chart (p. 158) on autism diagnoses from the Fonagy report is telling. gov.uk/government/publicatio…