Hansard

In the few months since I first confirmed to Parliament that I have ADHD, I have been touched and slightly overwhelmed by the number of people who have thanked me for speaking up, and who have commented on what they perceive as my courage and bravery in doing so. However, I feel slightly guilty, because I am not sure that I was brave at all. The thing about ADHD is that one has very poor impulse control, and I just got very angry about the press coverage of ADHD and felt that I had to speak up. I quite often find, when I see something that I think is unfair or unjust, that I speak before I have thought about whether it is sensible to do so. However, that is probably quite a good thing for an MSP. I will touch on that later.

I got angry again, though, because Netflix released a documentary called “Take Your Pills” a month or so ago, which is a sensationalist documentary that explores a trope around there being an explosion in diagnoses of ADHD, and suggests that the medication for ADHD is unnecessary and compares it to crystal meth. The documentary peddles and perpetuates myths that those of us with ADHD battle against almost daily: that ADHD is not real, that the meds do more harm than good and that doctors are handing out pills as though they were sweeties.

As part of speaking up, writing articles and speaking at events, which I have done since speaking out in Parliament, I have told my story about how the diagnosis of ADHD has been empowering, how it has transformed my life and how medication has been the vital first step in that.

However, I am not alone, because ADHD is not a rare condition: one in 20 people is like me. Everyone in here will know people—friends and others—with ADHD, and in each classroom there will be at least two or three children with ADHD.

That it is such a prevalent condition but there is so little understanding of it is just not right. People know more of the myths regarding ADHD than they now about the facts. The very fact that this is—I think—the first time that ADHD has been debated in the Scottish Parliament as a topic on its own is not right.

We are here today to bust the myths surrounding ADHD, and to build the understanding that l believe we need. Let us start with the facts. I have ADHD and I have been taking methylphenidate, which most people will know as Ritalin, every day for the past five years. Those are facts—now let us deal with the fiction. I am not a victim and I am not looking for special treatment; my brain is just wired up in a slightly different way. Things that most people find easy, mundane and routine are things that people like me find incredibly difficult.

I am not constantly running around and bouncing off the walls like a naughty child. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is just that—it is a composite of different traits. Part of it is about inattentiveness, so it is as much about the daydreaming child at the back of the classroom who is not concentrating at all as it is about the naughty child who is running around. I am much more on the inattentive end of the spectrum than I am on the hyperactive side.

I am not making it up. I feel pained that I have to say this, but ADHD is real. It is not an excuse for bad parenting and it is not something for which I am seeking special treatment. It is not a social phenomenon. If members were to see a scan of my brain, they would see that my prefrontal cortex is just not as active as most people’s are. My brain also does not produce enough dopamine. There are genetic markers that are highly predictive of ADHD.

I take ADHD medication, but I am not a zombie. The idea that, by giving people ADHD medication, we somehow turn them into incommunicative zombies is false. ADHD medication is, for the most part, stimulant based. It is the complete opposite of a sedative. If that sounds strange, let me put it like this. How many members have a cup of coffee before they start work, or a cup of tea when they sit down to write a speech? We take stimulants because it is a way of helping our brains to deal with mundane and slightly banal chores. It is about keeping our brains interested in what we have at hand. That is especially true of ADHD medication. It is also why medication is so important as a first step, in order that people can learn the skills and techniques that they need to deal with the condition on top of the pills, because without taking the pills, they cannot do that.

Many people ask me what it is like to have ADHD and what goes on in my head. The best way that I have of explaining it is to say that it is a bit like a record player on which the needle keeps jumping out of the groove. The person with ADHD knows which track they want to play, but the needle just will not stay in there. Medication is the first step that they need to take in order to keep the needle in the groove.

However, there is another way of looking at that record-player analogy, because people with ADHD do not just look at an individual track at a time: they like to look at the whole album. People with ADHD view the world in macro and not in micro. We like looking at the big picture; we see the connections. We are constantly finding tangents and different ways of looking at things, which allows us to see things that other people do not see. As I said at the beginning, being slightly uninhibited about speaking up is useful for an MSP, but I think that seeing that bigger picture and those connections is also vital for my work. It allows me to bring something else to the job. Five per cent of people have ADHD, so there will be other politicians who have it. I hope that this debate will give them the courage to get a diagnosis or, if they already have one, to speak up about it.

As I said, 5 per cent of the population have ADHD, but the percentage of the prison population who have the condition is four times higher, at 20 per cent. I want members to think about that. What is going on? At the very least, it points to a social failure—a failure of all our understanding—but it also points to a policy failure. For people to end up in that situation and for there to be such a high prevalence in prisons, something is not right.

There is one brutal and blunt fact. There is a myth that we overdiagnose ADHD, but nothing could be further from the truth. We underdiagnose the condition. Some 1 per cent of the adult population have an ADHD diagnosis, and the proportion is similar for the child population. That represents massive underdiagnosis and undermedication of the condition. The myths that are peddled prevent people from seeking help and taking the vital first step that medication represents, yet they need it to deal with their condition and its consequences.

In the words of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, medication is a “first-line therapy”. That needs to be borne in mind. We need to destigmatise medication and we need better access to mental health services. We need more than just medication—it is about pills and skills.

If there was one positive outcome from the very negative Netflix documentary, it was that people like me took to social media to speak up about the positive impact that pills have had on their lives, and what medication has enabled them to do. If members look up the hashtag #ITakeMyPillsBecause, they will see people’s testimonies and positive experiences. Indeed, that hashtag out-trended the one for the documentary. So I just say this: I take my pills because they enable me to function and because they free up my head to develop skills and to learn to cope with my condition but—which is most important—I take my pills because they have transformed my life and the life of my family.