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Anxiety Autism Burnout Demand Avoidance EHCPs Low Demand Parenting Mental Health Neurodiversity SEN School Screens Trauma
A podcast where clinical psychologists ask (and answer) questions. Naomi presents with Danielle (Dani) Drinkwater - a Clinical Psychologist, tutor, and author of the Mind the Couch blog.
Susie brings a number of unique and valuable perspectives to the topic of neurodiversity and joins Naomi and I this week to to help us kickstart season 3. As well as working clinically as a psychologist and having her own diagnosis of dyslexia, Susie works as a tutor on one of the UK’s clinical psychology training programmes. She is also part of the British Psychological Society’s working group supporting researchers using the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF), a non-diagnostic alternative to working with emotional distress.
Susie reports having found her dyslexia diagnosis incredibly helpful over the years, yet she also believes, as someone committed to evidence-based practice and to interrogating ideas, that dyslexia deserves the same critical eye (or as she might put it- ‘critique-ical’ eye) as any other diagnosis or psychiatric construct.
Together we examine the conceptual overlaps between neurodivergent presentations, psychosis and other psychiatric presentations, as well as areas of difference. We talk about what it means that dyslexia now sits under the neurodiversity umbrella and the various implications of understanding things the way we do currently, as well as posing the question- ‘what’s the alternative?’
Here is a link to the Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia document mentioned in the episode.
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The Channel 4 documentary The Great ADHD Myth? has sparked a national conversation, and it’s a heated one. For some, it was a much needed balance to the dominant narrative, while for others it was a biased and dangerous polemic.
One of the contributors to the Channel 4 programme, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist Dr Sami Timimi, argued in his book that the onus should be on those making claims about ADHD having a neurobiological cause to provide robust supporting evidence for such claims. The evidence often cited, he argues, is often overstretched and misinterpreted. Is he right?
In this episode, we grapple with some of these issues. Naomi and I consider whether the documentary could have been framed differently, how diagnostic thresholds have changed and what this means for the research, the evidence behind claims that ADHD is a brain-based condition, how we talk about ADHD, and why all this matters.
Here are some links to research and other sources referred to in the episode.
Here is a link to webpage for Cambridge University’s Centre for Attention, Learning and Memory (CALM), and an ACAMH (Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health) interview with a representative from CALM summarising their research as having “so far revealed that behavioural problems, patterns of cognitive difficulties and neural profiles do not align with specific diagnoses”. There’s also this ACAMH paper’s podcast.
Naomi spoke about this NYT article, and the RDoC and HiTOP research.
This is the 2025 meta-analysis on brain imaging research we discussed.
And for the clinical applications, journal article discussing differences between the ICD-11 and DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for ADHD, and posing the question, amongst other dilemmas and uncertainties- “do we threshold impairment against the average peer or the hypothetical potential of the individual?”.
Episode of the podcast series Navigating Neuropsychology examining a detailed case study of a young woman, described as being extremely bright, and therefore whose “areas of personal weakness”, which were not considered to be low for her age group, contributed to her ADHD diagnostic decision. This episode offers a detailed exploration of how diagnosticians might consider differential diagnosis, and the uncertainty often involved with diagnostic assessments, but also shows how such uncertainty can quickly become lost following assessment, as seen in the title of the episode where the clinical case is introduced as a young adult with type 1 diabetes, mental health, and ADHD.
The Channel 4 documentary The Great ADHD Myth? has polarised discussion, with one side saying that it was unbalanced and unscientific, while others say that it is a necessary challenge to the dominant narrative.
ADHD UK raised concerns about it from before the programme aired, and in this special episode we sat down with Chris Benson, education lead for ADHD UK, to find out what he thought. Chris brings decades of experience in education as well as the lived experience of his own late diagnosis and having a daughter with ADHD and an autistic son.
In this episode we talk about the reactions to the documentary, how Chris understands ADHD and his own experience of being misdiagnosed, and the implications of all of this for children who are struggling at school.
Here are some more information about the research and researchers referred to in this podcast.
Long form NYT article about ADHD and the research.
Hypercurious podcast featuring Edmund Sonuga-Barke, Anne-Laure Le Cunff and Eleanor Dommett talking about the neuroscience and controversies in ADHD research.
Large-scale studies showing that those with a diagnosis of ADHD have a higher risk of road traffic accidents and that taking ADHD medication reduced the risk of suicidal behaviour, substance misuse and criminality. Recent study (mentioned by Dani in the podcast) which indicates that stimulant medication may not actually be working on attention, but may instead increase vigilance and make tasks more rewarding.
Longitudinal study following up children who took ADHD medication over eight years which showed that childhood treatment did not improve longer term outcomes in adolescence such as grades, arrests or psychiatric hospitalisations. Large-scale study which found that taking ADHD medication in childhood was associated with shorter adult height and higher BMI.
The Guardian called it the most controversial show of the year. Amnesty International called on Channel 4 to make multiple changes before broadcast. ADHD UK complained to Ofcom. There was widespread fury on social media, with people arguing that the question posed in the Channel 4 documentary press release - is ADHD a neurodevelopmental disorder, or a social construct - was a dangerous one that could harm marginalised people.
It is fair to say that the documentary The Great ADHD Myth? polarised people before anyone had seen it.
And so when we had the opportunity to sit down with Lucy Johnstone, a consultant clinical psychologist who appeared in the documentary, we seized it with both hands. Lucy has a long history of thinking critically about the psychiatric classification system, but it is only more recently that she has started writing about neurodiversity.
We asked her what she thought of the programme, what she made of the reaction and where she thinks we go from here. She told us about the importance of lived experience, about a lifetime spent asking difficult questions and why she thinks that the conversation about ADHD is preventing us from talking about the things that really matter.
The blog series on neurodiversity Lucy wrote with John Cromby is here and her book A Straight Talking Introduction to Psychiatric Diagnosis can be found here.