Meeting of the Parliament 05 June 2018
I thank Daniel Johnson for bringing this important issue to the attention of the Parliament. I watched the “Take Your Pills” documentary and felt much the same way as others did. One reviewer called it “aggravatingly myopic” and “scaremongering”.
I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests, which shows that I am a nurse. I should also mention that I have had many years of first-hand experience of living with someone with ADHD. My husband has ADHD and he was diagnosed as an adult when he was 35 years old and living in Los Angeles. The diagnosis was life changing for him. When we met, he had been on the psychostimulant medication Adderall for his ADHD for almost two years, and I saw no symptoms of any kind and had no idea that he had ADHD until he told me.
Adderall worked for him. It helped him focus, it helped with project completion and it helped to promote positive relationships with everyone. My husband describes his ADHD like this:
“Imagine you are sitting in a room trying to read a book and there are three televisions on, all on different channels, and there are two stereos in the room playing different songs, and there are also three groups of people standing around you carrying on three different conversations.”
That is how he describes the way that it feels inside his head when reading a book. However, when he takes Adderall, there is only one television on and one stereo playing, so it is much easier for him to focus on what he is reading.
ADHD is caused by a variety of environmental and genetic factors and is usually a hereditary condition. It usually becomes apparent before the age of 12, but many people, such as my husband, are not diagnosed until adulthood. It is estimated that, globally, around 5 per cent of school-aged children have ADHD and that about 4 per cent of the adult population have it. In Scotland, however, only 0.08 per cent of the adult population—eight out of 10,000—is receiving medication for ADHD. I suspect that there are a lot of adults out there like my husband who know that medication would help them and who would like to receive it but who are currently not receiving it. Thirteen years ago, after we returned to Scotland, my husband went to his general practitioner and was informed that ADHD in adults was not high on the agenda. That was in 2005. Now in 2018, I have encouraged him to go to his current GP and try again, and I hope that he will get a more satisfactory result.
The motion notes that the SIGN—Scottish intercollegiate guidelines network—guideline for the management of ADHD in children and young people, which is SIGN guideline 112, has not been updated since 2009. In fact, at the bottom of the SIGN 112 web page, it states:
“This guideline was issued in 2009 and will be considered for review in three years.”
It continues:
“Use with caution, declaration of interests governance may not be in line with current policy.”
The web page warns that the guideline is out of date. I urge the Scottish Government to encourage Healthcare Improvement Scotland to update SIGN guideline 112, on the management of ADHD in children and young people, as a matter of urgency.
I thank the Scottish ADHD Coalition for its work and excellent website, which is full of helpful factual information. I note that there are 15 ADHD support groups across Scotland and that only three of them are for adults with ADHD. I was perturbed to see that there are no groups south of the central belt in my South Scotland region. There is no group in Dumfries, none in Ayr and none in Stranraer, and I would like that to change. I also discovered a terrific YouTube channel called “How to ADHD”, which was created by Jessica McCabe in the USA. She has excellent information in her videos and I encourage everyone—professionals as well as folk with ADHD and their family members—to check it out.
17:15