How disability was hijacked by the privileged
I have ADHD but I am not disabled, I am not a victim. We need to direct our conversation, attention and – most important – funding to the right causes.
In the past few weeks four Australian celebrities have “bravely” come forward to talk about their ADHD diagnosis. At almost the same time, dynamo and former AFL star Neale Daniher was named Australian of the Year for his advocacy for a cure for motor neurone disease.
Sadly, I have seen more coverage of ADHD than the life-destroying nature of MND, despite cases such as Daniher’s being far worthier of attention, conversation and, most important, public funding for resources and research. It seems to be a perfect example of what academic, author and cultural critic Freddie deBoer calls the “gentrification of disability”.
As we have started to see more attention paid, rightfully, to inclusivity and ways we can celebrate and destigmatise disability, we also have seen more people hijacking the cause from those with serious ailments that affect their ability to learn, get jobs and lead fulfilling, independent lives. DeBoer talks about this phenomenon occurring in an adjacent neurodivergent disorder.
“Autism was a neighbourhood that was unfairly seen as hardscrabble and rundown by the ‘neurotypical’ world. But a group of autistic people with an unusual amount of privilege decided that it was a great spot to set up shop, they fancied it up, they made more and more of it in their own image, and before you know it, they owned the place. In doing so they drove the original residents out of town,” he wrote in his newsletter.
When I was about six years old my childhood psychologist (hired because no one could convince me I wasn’t an alien) diagnosed me with ADHD. The lady recommended Ritalin and my mum declined. That was pretty much the last I heard of it.
It wasn’t that my parents weren’t attentive and didn’t want me to receive care or treatment that would help me; it was because giving a heavy drug to a six-year-old was a big decision and they didn’t think ADHD was affecting me enough to outweigh the drug’s potential side effects. I am completely supportive of people going on Ritalin if they need to. I just wasn’t one of them.
I always knew I was diagnosed with ADHD but I never spent any time thinking about it because after some initial learning difficulties and extra care I’d gone on to keep up with my school peers, find employment and be a relatively functioning adult (open to interpretation).
That was until about seven years ago when everyone under the sun was diagnosed with the disorder. On a few occasions people sadly and solemnly broke the news to me about their “neurodivergency” and I cheerfully exclaimed: “Me too!”, whereupon I would be looked at with a grave face and shake of the head as if I were insensitive because they really had it.
I know there are lots of variations in severity of this condition and I am not downplaying anyone else’s experiences. I am, however, downplaying my own because on the severity scale I’d guess mine is about a 2/10. I’d guess many of the diagnoses in the past decade actually were on a similar scale.
And this is the part that annoys me. I am not disabled. I am not a victim. Being a 2/10 on the neurodivergent scale shouldn’t be a big deal. If rates of diagnosis continue on their current trajectory, I imagine about half the population will be found to be neurodivergent. Which in fact makes me incredibly dull and common.
If you need help coping with your ADHD, seek help. If you need medication, please medicate. But, for the love of god, please stop talking about it. The mass wave, nay tsunami, of ADHD discussion during the past few years has been a success. We have destigmatised, demystified and debunked. You did it! Yet the amount of space neurodiversity still takes up on my social media feed and in the media in general is similar to what I’d expect for a severely disabled individual whose life is significantly affected.
It is awesome that people are getting a better understanding of themselves and talking openly about coping mechanisms that may help others. But they are eclipsing the sun. Society’s capacity for conversation and attention on disabilities should be infinite but it is not. And right now the wrong people, with far less severe issues, are taking up too much space and public focus.
The symptoms for ADHD can read like vague horoscopes or a Cosmopolitan quiz a la 1990s. To name a few, they include: being able to concentrate on things you like and not being able to concentrate on things you don’t; being easily distracted; being forgetful; and having poor time management. I bet most of you reading this just agreed you’ve noticed these traits in yourself because they can be readily applied to almost everyone. A lot of those symptoms also sound like a busy modern mum, crumbling under societal pressures.
Recent research found the percentage of women aged between 23-29 and 30-49 years newly diagnosed with ADHD almost doubled from 2020 to 2022 in the US. It’s not lost on me that this doubling occurred in the Covid years, when the workplace and home life collided and we spent more time on our screens.
What I have noticed is the busier I get, the worse my ADHD gets. The brain is a muscle; the more I demand of its attention, the more that attention will fracture. It would be illogical to think we can keep piling more on to our plates, fracturing our attention spans, and for it not to have an impact. The saying “women are good multitaskers” has been around a long time. But it was created when a woman might be doing laundry and keeping an eye on her kid at the same time. It was created before we had smartphones.
This led me to ponder whether perhaps the sudden rise in ADHD diagnoses was related to circumstance as opposed to genetics: could we be creating ADHD as opposed to being born with it?
Psychologist Clare Rowe told me that while being busy cannot trigger ADHD, it can cause symptoms that mimic ADHD.
“It’s crucial to differentiate between symptoms of ADHD and the effects of chronic stress and overwhelm, both of which are common in middle-aged women. Many women in this age group are balancing demanding careers, raising children, caregiving for ageing parents and managing a household. Add to that the societal pressures to ‘do it all’ and it’s no surprise that many women experience symptoms that closely resemble ADHD,” she said.
She said life stages and cognitive load stress could force a deterioration in previously more mild symptoms.
“The rise in ADHD diagnoses among middle-aged women is not an indication that stress and mental overload are creating ADHD, but rather that these factors may exacerbate existing ADHD traits, making them more noticeable or difficult to manage.”
A lot of women who receive a late-life diagnosis are resentful of the medical system for not picking it up sooner, but if the condition became severe enough to seek a medical diagnosis only later in life, it’s not a failure of the medical system, it’s a failure of societal pressures that have caused it.
I also think it’s important to note that once you go on ADHD medication, there is next to no attempt to get you off it. At this point I’ll avoid going down a rabbit hole about how much of a cash cow this is for big pharma, but if we are serious about looking at what is causing the sudden spike in ADHD, instead of just managing symptoms, I think we need to do more digging.
A lot of that will be looking at circumstantial exacerbators, not just genetics. This is similar to the weight-loss drug debate. I have no judgment of people who take medication for being overweight, but we may want to look at circumstantial influences and if we can change them before half the population ends up on a drug for life.
I am genuinely pleased for anyone who has received a diagnosis that has improved their life and made them a better parent, friend, contributor to the economy and participant in our community. Of course, this is a net positive. I just think we are giving more airtime to a mild condition instead of life-threatening, truly debilitating ones that are completely opaque with little will to fund the research to find cures or causes. I am sure for some people with ADHD the challenges they face are genuine. But they pale in comparison to other disabilities getting far less attention.
Charlotte Mortlock is executive director for Hilma’s Network, an organisation recruiting women to the Liberal Party.
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