The Great ADHD Myth?, which aired last night (Tuesday 18 August) on Channel 4, sees presenter and NHS psychiatrist Max Pemberton speak to medical professionals who are sceptical about Attention-deficit\/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) being a legitimate medical condition, particularly in young children. <\/p>\n
ADHD<\/a> is recognised by the NHS as a condition where those affected struggle to concentrate or sit still. Symptoms can include having high energy levels, getting easily distracted, being forgetful, losing things often and finding it hard to organise your time. <\/p>\n However, Pemberton\u2019s documentary questions whether ADHD is a neuro-developmental disorder, how it should be treated and who benefits from the rise in diagnoses over the last few years. It also conducts an experiment which sees 10-year-old Mason stop taking his ADHD medication, which he has taken for two years, over a six-week period to see whether consuming less sugar, banning screen time and introducing yoga helps instead. While initially deciding to keep Mason off his medication, claiming that it had \u201cdulled his sparkle\u201d, she placed him back on it two months later after his performance in school declined. <\/p>\n Now, charity ADHD UK has responded to the film, revealing that it has complained to Ofcom, and is encouraging others to do the same. \u201cADHD is not a myth. It is not a social construct. And the programme\u2019s own end credits told you what its sixty minutes wouldn\u2019t: the boy at its centre went back on his medication, and his schoolwork improved,\u201d the organisation said in a statement on Tuesday. <\/p>\n \u201cTheir experiment disproved their conclusion. They aired their version anyway. We have already complained to Ofcom. A fuller submission follows, built on the impact data you give us below. We deserve better than this.\u201d<\/p>\n The charity also asked its social media follows to \u201cconsider filling in our survey and complaining to Ofcom\u201d over the documentary\u2019s claims \u2013 adding that it will also take its findings to Parliament . <\/p>\n Its chief executive, Henry Shelford, called the documentary \u201csensationalist nonsense\u201d and \u201cone-sided\u201d, revealing that he wrote to Channel 4 to ask for corrections to be made as well as a title change. <\/p>\n \u201cI wish Channel 4 had done what they did for the menopause with Davina McCall, or for dyslexia with Jamie Oliver,\u201d he told The Mirror. \u201cThey did shows which were trying to demolish the myths, whereas this show is trying to exacerbate myths. It\u2019s a shame they didn\u2019t do what they are often so good at which is getting a deeper understanding of the reality of an issue using experts who are leaders in their field. <\/p>\n \u201cWe wouldn\u2019t have The Menopause Myth or The Dyslexia Myth or The Migraine Myth, so why this? It shows the prejudice and the stigma around ADHD.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that 80 per cent of people find that ADHD medication has a positive impact, and that he was \u201cso angry\u201d by the documentary\u2019s experiment with just one child. \u201cI nearly fell off my chair at the end when the experiment hadn\u2019t worked. It pretends to be science-led but compares a sample size of one to the experience of millions and it obfuscates the truth by spending an hour building a story of a child not needing medication by doing yoga and forest walks and having less screen time and then at the end, through epilogue text, admits that the child struggled in school.\u201d<\/p>\n Others hit out at the documentary online, with broadcaster India Willoughby writing: \u201cReally disappointing that Channel 4 \u2013 the channel you\u2019d think most likely to remain sane during the culture war \u2013 is showing a programme tonight called The Great ADHD Myth?. Thinking the question mark excuses it. Grim.\u201d<\/p>\n Economic justice campaigner Richard Murphy said that Channel 4 should \u201chang its head in shame\u201d, pointing out that the documentary lacked interviews with psychologists who believed the condition exists \u2013 and anyone else with the disorder other than 10-year-old Mason.<\/p>\n \u201cThe most obvious thing to say is that this was a massively arrogant and profoundly unbalanced programme, clearly intended to present a biased view on a subject where the opinion presented will cause significant harm to a very large number of people in the UK,\u201d he wrote in his blog. \u201cThat, I think, was unforgivable.\u201d <\/p>\n A Channel 4 spokesperson said in a statement to The Independent: \u201cChannel 4 has a remit to stimulate public debate and challenge the status quo, which includes offering a platform to a range of different views across the broadness of our slate. <\/p>\n \u201cNot everyone will agree with everything included in the programme and we acknowledge the strength of feeling that this subject evokes, however there is considerable public debate in this area and testing conventional thinking and exploring different ideas, as is the case with The ADHD Myth?, is a legitimate part of Channel 4\u2019s remit. Channel 4 has also aired a number of other programmes on the topic of ADHD, which cover a variety of other viewpoints including: Do You Have ADHD?, Johnny Vegas: Art, ADHD & Me and Sam Thompson: Is This ADHD?\u201d<\/p>\n While the documentary provoked backlash, it received positive reviews from some outlets. The Guardian<\/a> called it the \u201cmost controversial show of the year\u201d in which Pemberton \u201canswers his questions convincingly\u201d, while The Times<\/a> also said that \u201cmuch of this hour felt convincing, or at least the start of a necessary discussion\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[97],"class_list":["post-819867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Mason,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-19-at-11-26-15.png\")
Mason, 10, takes part in an experiment in the controversial documentary (Minnow Productions)<\/p>\n![\"Max](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-19-at-11-27-28.png\")
Max Pemberton speaks to medical professionals who are sceptical about ADHD being a condition (Minnow Productions)<\/p>\n