Overdiagnosis Of ADHD…. Here We Go Again.

By Dr. Nancy Doyle

First published in Forbes, 05-December-2025

Wes Streeting’s recent observation that ADHD diagnoses are escalating is not news. He is right to set up a review. However, let’s get serious about the numbers for a minute.

Reports indicate that personal independence payment claims, a welfare benefit for disabled people, have risen from fewer than 30,000 people in 2020 to nearly 80,000 this year, in the same timeframe that disability claims have risen from 2 million pre-pandemic to 2.9 million people in 2024. This is a national tragedy and totally unsustainable.

However, statistics also suggest that ADHD is actually under diagnosed in the UK, with fewer than 1% having an actual diagnosis but prevalence studies indicating that 3-4% would meet the criteria for diagnosis.

ADHD-ers have a lower life expectancy than the general population, by 8.6 years for women and 6.8 years for men. This is not a flippant diagnosis. It is serious.

My last point, from the science, is that ADHD is a genetic condition, with some studies estimating over 70% heritability, which is higher than most mental health conditions. We didn’t invent it during covid. As people are being diagnosed in larger numbers, this represents awareness and improved understanding of how women were missed in childhood and are now coming forward, or how people from Black, Brown and working-class communities were under and misdiagnosed.

The criticism is that we are over pathologizing normal emotions and cognitive states. This insinuates that people claiming benefits for ADHD related difficulties are malingering and need to pull their socks up. Having worked supporting ADHDers since 2002, my observation in private practice is that the people who are getting diagnosed are in worse shape. Dr Asif Ahmed, a GP, concurs.

“In clinics we are seeing higher rates of fatigue, brain fog, racing pulse since the pandemic. These disproportionately affect neurodivergent people, who want to stay in work and are actually the most frustrated with the situation. We are listening and not blaming. We’re investigating immune responses and looking for ways to treat this problem. Thinking about this as an over diagnosis of ADHD ignores the complexity but also stops us from thinking about treatment.”

Pre-pandemic, there were just as many ADHDers in the gene pool. Many of us were working, studying, thriving, working around our difficulties. Rather than writing the phenomenon off as a TikTok driven panic, our public health officials needs to consider what might be going behind those numbers. The idea that thousands of people would suddenly choose to hijack their own careers, earning power and social identity overnight is wrong-headed. No amount of social media influencing is going to drive so many people to isolation and poverty in such a short time.

What if the reason we are no longer functioning is physical, not motivational? Hypermobility affects nearly 80% of ADHD women and over 30% of ADHD men, compared to just over 20% and 10% in the neurotypical population respectively. Hypermobile people are more vulnerable to viruses, pollution and yes, covid. Post viral syndromes exacerbate or trigger inflammation, including neuroinflammation. This is worse for ADHDers who start from a lower bar. The pandemic caused a series of physiological reactions that make fatigue, brain fog, concentration issues and a racing pulse more likely.

What’s happening is called diagnostic overshadowing. It’s when all your symptoms are attributed to the headline label, rather than curiously explored and believed. As soon as you describe brain fog and suspect ADHD, the ADHD is used to explain everything. Further, because of specialisms operating in silos and a lack of connected IT systems in our health service, the dots are not being joined, so even those whose post viral symptoms are severe enough to be treated by rheumatology, immunology or cardiology are not being connected to the psychiatric services managing the ADHD.

We are not going to move the dial on disability unemployment or lack of productivity by restricting the already log jammed diagnosis system. We need to be more expansive not less. The neurodivergent community are unwell, not belligerent and demanding. We need medical treatment for inflammation and post viral syndrome, much of which is cheap and easy to obtain. We need some out of the box policy thinking, not more of the victim-blaming same.

The neurodiversity movement was intended to drive career potential for neurodivergent people. We didn’t want handouts, we wanted to thrive.

The ADHD diagnoses are not wrong. But we need to start wondering whether it is the ADHD forcing us out of the workforce, or the poor health. Wes Streeting can look a lot closer to home for the solution to his, and the UK tax payer’s, problem. We need joined up health care, not a motivational speech about how demotivated we are.