The ADHD scandal: you heard it here f irst

WHAT a strange thing ‘ADHD’ is. There’s no objective, scientific test used in diagnosing it, yet it is treated with a powerful mind-altering drug, very like an illegal amphetamine, which can have severe and lasting side effects.

Even odder, most of its supposed ‘symptoms’ are actually experienced by other people, not the patient – by parents and teachers whose lives are disrupted by boisterous children.

And worse still, the small patient has no choice about the treatment. He (it’s usually he) is fed these potent pills by adults he trusts but who in the end are far bigger and more powerful than him.

I have thought for many years that this is a scandal, which needs to be denounced and stopped by a major outbreak of public anger. But I continue to wait for anyone else to notice, and know that the powerful and well-funded lobby which promotes ‘attention deficit hyperactivity disorder’ will denounce me. I even know exactly what it will say and how it will say it.

So I’d like to offer praise and thanks to Amanda Spielman, the head of Ofsted, who last week expressed alarm at the huge increases in prescriptions for ‘ADHD’ drugs.

She said it was implausible that so many more young people were suffering from the disorder and needed medication to control their symptoms.

And she was shocked by the ‘astonishingly high’ number of children on medication in one Ofsted focus group in a deprived part of Essex. She will get a lot of abuse for this. She should stand up to it.