The following is a professional commentary that reflects the opinions and experiences of its author.April 16, 2025Every few years, the ADHD community must endure another skeptic – an author, a journalist, a contrarian mental health provider, quite frequently a chiropractor – recycling claims like “ADHD is overdiagnosed,” “stimulants don’t work,” or, most remarkably in one case, “ADHD does not exist.”In every instance, including Paul Tough’s recent New York Times Magazine feature, the articles serve only to obfuscate the conversation about ADHD because:Invariably, in such analyses, clients of ADHD services are portrayed as hapless dupes of a psychiatric industrial complex hellbent on profiting from a made-up affliction that is really just the same thing that everyone else experiences but somehow handles quite nobly and with aplomb.
In reality, almost no one seeking help for ADHD feels hoodwinked. Why would they? The work they do to overcome ADHD is certainly difficult.
I have found that anyone benefiting from stimulant medication typically has a love-hate relationship with it; if it weren’t working, nobody anywhere any time would pay their hard-earned dollars each month to receive it.In his article, Tough retreads a very old tire of ADHD tropes dating back to the genesis of my career in doctoral school in the late 1980s.