Everyone has ADHD nowadays !
“Everyone has ADHD nowadays.”
I hear this regularly. From patients who doubt their own diagnosis. From colleagues who question the rising numbers.
It is not supported by the evidence.
A paper published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, authored by 32 academics, clinicians, and people with lived experience, examined the overdiagnosis narrative directly. Their conclusion: there is no robust evidence that ADHD is over-diagnosed in the UK.
Administrative prevalence data consistently remain substantially below estimated population prevalence, pointing to under-diagnosis, not over-diagnosis.
The paper also acknowledges that misdiagnosis can occur, particularly where assessments rely heavily on self-reporting or where clinicians have not followed national guidance. That is a quality problem, not a volume problem.
In my ADHD clinics, the patients I see most often are not people chasing a trendy diagnosis. They are adults who spent decades struggling, dismissed, and told they were simply not trying hard enough.
The real problem is not too many diagnoses.
It is too many people still waiting for one.
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