Last week, I was full of a head
cold. Nothing too bad, but it meant I had a more slowed down week than normal. It
also meant I had more time to catch up on my reading. I was so pleased to read
of the Darlington nurses and their success at an employment tribunal last week.
Common sense prevailed, and we should all be truly grateful the eight nurses
had the courage to put truth to power. It was a great story, with a brilliant outcome.
That said, there were some really
dismal stories around in the media last week. I find it difficult to believe that
so many people are really interested in the Ramsey/Peaty feud or even the Beckham
family feud, and don’t get me started on the banal Molly-Mae or Eamonn Holmes sagas.
Tedious is the word that comes to mind.
Equally tedious, was the painful video
of the dancing Meghan and Harry – I think I must have missed something along
the way as this was a post, similar to several of the social media posts I saw last week, that used the caption ‘when 2026 feels just like 2016… …you had to be
there’. In 2016, I was Dean of a large School of Nursing. During that year
I presented research papers in Australia, Germany, Czech Republic and Hungary. I
was there then, and I’m here now. So, what am I missing?
I haven’t, however, been to Venezuela.
What a pathetic and wretched story we witnessed involving Venezuela and the US President last week. The Venezuelan opposition politician, Maria Corina Machado gifted
her 2025 Nobel Peace Prize medal to Donald Trump. The fact that he gleefully accepted
it made me think just what a sad man he is.
Not lifesaving, but there was a ‘life
changing’ story that caught my eye last week. It came from a Dr Alex George.
Apparently, he is a famous ‘Love Island’ star and a former A&E
doctor who has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
(ADHD), aged 30. Now I don’t know what a ‘Love Island’ star might be, but
of course I know what an A&E doctor is; however, it was the notion that
getting an ADHD diagnosis had changed his life that intrigued me.
Now, like me, you can’t have missed
the number of ADHD related stories in the news over the last few weeks. There is clearly
a challenging issue facing both the NHS and individuals like Dr George. Last
December, our somewhat politically ambitious Secretary of State for Health and
Social Care, Wes Streeting, launched an independent review into what seems to
be an ever-increasing demand for assessments and treatment. Many adults and children
can wait an average of eight years to be assessed and even longer for
treatment. The government’s ADHD taskforce warned late last year that the people
with ADHD, who have not been assessed, often struggle with education, work
and social relationships. They put the hidden costs of such delays at around £179bn a year
as a consequence of crime, educational underachievement, drug and alcohol misuse
and mental illness.
The Guardian newspaper
last week reported that NHS spending on ADHD services will be over budget by
some £164m by April this year. It is perhaps no wonder then that Wes Streeting’s
independent review has also been charged with considering whether there is any
evidence that there might be over-diagnosis of this condition, and by implication,
other mental health problems. For me, this is a story that has been nagging
away in my mind for a while now.
Somehow, here in the UK and especially over
the past 12 months, we seem to have conflated mental illness, autism, learning disability,
and all kinds of neurodiversity into a single undifferentiated set of problems.
Clearly this is not right, and such reductionist conceptualisations don't serve
people living with any of these problems well. Like the Darlington nurses, I
have now started to articulate my concerns at a local, regional and national
level. I’m pleased to report I’m getting some very positive responses – hopefully,
we will, collectively, make a difference. Everyone, whatever the diagnosis or societal label they are given, deserves to have their individual needs recognised and met.