The noise around ADHD

If you’ve been diagnosed recently, there’s a particular headwind you may not expect. It isn’t your own understanding. It’s the wider commentary.

This post grew out of another question someone asked me that was originally about explaining ADHD to a spouse. As I started unpacking that, it became obvious that the media environment is a topic in its own right. It shapes what people think ADHD is before you’ve even opened your mouth.

We can come back to relationships another time. For now, this is about the background noise you’re trying to communicate through.

Awareness

It’s clearly true that we talk more about mental health and feelings than we did in the past. For many people that is a positive shift. When emotions are more normalised, there is less pressure to bottle everything up until it becomes unmanageable.

ADHD has followed that broader trend. It comes up far more often now in mainstream media. In the UK, more than a few public figures have talked about diagnoses or suspicions. In principle, that should be helpful. It should make ADHD feel less shameful and less hidden, not just for the person diagnosed but for their family as well.

Exposure

The problem is that awareness and understanding are not the same thing.

When coverage increases but depth does not, people start to notice the frequency before they understand what they are hearing. They hear the term repeatedly and conclude it must be either exaggerated or fashionable.

That’s the backdrop for comments like “I think everyone’s a bit ADHD”. It is not usually said with cruelty. It is the logical outcome of shallow coverage plus a lack of general understanding of the condition.

A lot of articles are short. They are designed for quick attention. You get a headline, a few paragraphs, maybe a celebrity soundbite, and very little explanation of what ADHD actually is or what it looks like in real life. That may not be deliberate. It may simply be the format. But the impact is a two-edged sword.

ADHD becomes more normalised as a topic, while simultaneously becoming easier for scepticism to take hold. If it looks like “everyone” has it, people start to wonder if it is real. Public figures look and sound ordinary. Online attention has become its own profession. It is not hard to see how cynicism grows in that environment.

Suspicion

That cynicism has a cost. It turns everyday disclosure into justification.

I noticed this personally when a documentary aired about potentially questionable ADHD clinics, high fees, and concerns about diagnosis and prescribing. It may well have been an important piece of reporting. But it also made me defensive.

When I told a friend I’d been diagnosed, their initial response was, “Oh, is it from one of those dodgy clinics on Panorama.”

That was upsetting for two reasons. It missed how significant the diagnosis was for me, and it added judgement before curiosity. It also shows the broader pattern. Media coverage doesn’t stay “out there”. It arrives inside conversations at exactly the moment you are trying to be understood.

History

There is also a generational layer to this. Some people remember when ADHD was primarily associated with hyperactive children who were previously described as “naughty”. For some, the shift to a medical framing was a breakthrough. It meant support, understanding, and better outcomes.

For others, particularly more reactionary types, it became a story about excuses. “Bad behaviour.” “Bad parenting.” It is an old argument, and it is still in circulation.

The obvious problem is that it insults children and parents. It also throws shade on every adult with ADHD, because it implies the whole concept is a convenience rather than a reality.

Burden

This is why the media environment can be exhausting for ADHD people and their families. Not because media attention is inherently bad, but because the combination of overexposure and shallow understanding creates friction.

It can put you in a position of having to justify yourself from the start, before you’ve even explained what your actual experience is. Then social media piles on, as do comment sections, and you end up navigating a stew of cynicism, ignorance, and certainty from people who do not know you.

That is tiring. It is also emotionally costly because it keeps reintroducing the idea that you might not be believed.

Incentives

There is another layer that worries me as well. Attention economics rewards strong reactions. I remember reading that for things to go viral they often need to trigger awe or anger. That makes ADHD an easy target.

When a topic is widely discussed but poorly understood, it becomes fertile ground for people who want clicks, ratings, streams, or political leverage. You can see how an argument framed as “everyone’s claiming this now” will reliably provoke cynicism and anger. It has the ingredients of a culture-war story even when it shouldn’t.

That makes it harder for ordinary conversations to stay humane and grounded.

Community

This is one reason community matters. When the outside conversation becomes noisy, it helps to have spaces where you don’t have to prove anything.

It also helps to remember that scepticism in the air doesn’t invalidate your experience. It just means you may need better language and better framing when you explain it to the people who matter.

On a more upbeat note, I’m going to cover that in the next post.