“Too many kids prescribed drugs” warns world leading ADHD expert | UK | News

MASS’s prescribing of medication for conditions such as Attention Deficit Disorder is a ‘vast experiment’ on children in the UK and does nothing to tackle the root causes of the problem, an expert says.

Author, speaker and leading expert on Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Dr. Gabor Maté says the increase in diagnoses reflects a deeper crisis in childhood, not just a medical disorder.

Dr. made the diagnosis of this condition after researching Prince Harry’s childhood trauma and his role in the Royal Family. Maté noted that Health Minister Wes Streeting’s ongoing review suggests the condition is being over-diagnosed and over-medicalised, with too many children being put on medication too quickly.

The review noted that the number of people diagnosed with ADHD has more than doubled since 2021, highlighting an “unusual” increase especially among girls and young women.

More than 800,000 people in England have now been officially diagnosed with ADHD, according to NHS data.

At the same time, one in 44 children and one in 125 adults have the condition in their medical records.

Many experts insist that ADD and its sister condition, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, are a well-established neurodevelopmental genetic condition with a strong scientific basis.

They argue that medications can be life-changing, improving concentration, reducing impulsivity, and helping children function at school and at home.

Some also say the increased diagnosis rates reflect better awareness, improved screening and the fact that previously overlooked children are now being recognized.

The review, commissioned by Wes Streeting, is expected to examine both over-diagnosis and under-diagnosis, as well as whether support is reaching the right children at the right time.

But Dr. Distracted Minds: The Origins and Recovery of Attention Deficit Disorder. Maté says even this debate—overdiagnosis or underdiagnosis—risks missing something more fundamental.

Speaking on the Care Visions: Family Talk podcast, he argues that the label explains the behavior but not the cause.

He said: “These are all descriptions of certain patterns. And the question is: Why? And the diagnosis doesn’t explain anything about why it happened.”

Dr Maté rejects the idea that ADD and ADHD are inherited disorders.

“I think this is complete nonsense. This is a complete misreading of the genetics literature,” he said.

He added: “The truth is that no one has ever found a single gene that indicates that you will have ADHD if you have it, that you will have ADHD if you don’t have it, that you won’t have ADHD if you don’t have it. Nor has anyone found a group of genes that automatically determines the condition or whose absence rules it out. There are some genes that make it more likely, but just because a child is more prone to something doesn’t mean that he or she is cured.”

Instead, he says, it is the sensitivity, not the disorder, that children inherit. For example, asthma or allergies seen in many of these children are other symptoms of hypersensitivity, he said.

“What’s genetic is a high degree of susceptibility. That means they’re much more influenced by the environment. And it really comes down to what the environment is like. Modern science tells us that genes are turned on and off by the environment.”

This, he argues, helps explain why diagnoses are increasing so rapidly; This is something that genetics alone cannot explain.

“Genes do not change in a population for 10, 15, 20 or 30 years,” he argued. According to him, the change comes from the conditions in which children grow up.

Dr Maté says many symptoms of ADD are coping mechanisms shaped by early experiences rather than a disease.

“Let’s take wandering off, absent-mindedness. What is it? It’s not a disease. It’s actually a coping mechanism,” he said.

“If I stress you out, you can fight back or hang up. But what if you don’t make it? Your brain just kind of shuts down and adjusts to protect you from stress.”

In this view, behaviors often labeled as dysregulated may instead be adaptive responses; The brain protects itself in environments it experiences as overwhelming.

Dr Maté says today’s children are growing up in conditions that put families under constant and often invisible pressure. “No matter how loving and well-intentioned parents are, being a parent these days is extraordinarily difficult.”

Economic pressure, long working hours, unstable housing and increased anxiety among adults all feed into family life. At the same time, many parents are raising their children in relative isolation, without the extended family and community networks that once helped share the burden.

He argues that humans have evolved to raise children not in small, stressful, nuclear homes, but in larger communities where care is distributed.

In modern life, this support has been broken; parents are overwhelmed, and children begin to absorb this stress from the earliest stages of development, even before birth.

He also points out that stress during pregnancy, early attachment, and emotional availability in infancy are critical factors that shape how the brain develops.

Dr Maté is critical of the rapid move towards medicine – but he is not entirely against it.

“As a person with ADD, I have taken these myself, and as a doctor, I have prescribed them. But at best, they regulate symptoms in the short term.” he said. “Long-term studies show that the drugs don’t help anyone make any improvements.”

“They should never be the only answer, and they should rarely be the first answer.”

He says drugs may have a place, but warns that they are used too quickly and too widely.

“This is a huge experiment,” he said, referring specifically to the increasing use of antipsychotic drugs to control children’s behavior. “Do we know what the effects will be on a five-year-old given the vaccine 40 years from now? We don’t know. This is an experiment.”

Dr Maté says the rising number of children being diagnosed with ADD and ADHD points to something deeper than overdiagnosis or increased awareness.

“I think those are valid points. But they don’t cover the whole picture,” he said.

“Twenty-five percent of adults in the United States self-identify as having ADHD…an impossible number.”

But beyond awareness and misdiagnosis, there is a real increase in distress, he adds.

“We’re definitely seeing more young people with those characteristics. I think we’re seeing more people who are really suffering in all kinds of ways.”

He attributes this not only to a rise in ADD cases but also to wider increases in anxiety, depression, addiction and self-harm among young people. All of these related problems cannot be attributed to simple genetics, he said. “Is anyone seriously claiming to have a gene that can cut themselves?”

Central to his argument is how the brain forms early in life.

“No child is born with any impulse regulation. No child is born with any emotional self-regulation. No child is born with any attention. They have to develop,” he said.

And this development largely depends on the environment.

“It develops under the influence of the environment.”

“So when the parents are stressed, the child is stressed, too. It’s that simple.”

He emphasized that this is not about blaming parents, but about recognizing the pressure they are under.

“This is a social, political and economic issue. It’s not bad parents.”

“This is a problem with parents who are too stressed to meet their children’s emotional needs.”

He added: “We’re talking about a culture here that is failing our children.”

“We now live in a toxic culture…it affects children by affecting the capacity of parents to be fully present for their children.”

Dr Maté explored these ideas in bestselling books such as Scattered Minds and The Myth of Normal, arguing that many modern conditions arise from stress and early life experience rather than fixed illnesses.

The full interview with Gabor Maté is available at Visions of Care: Family Talk