Article
Attention
Comment
Psychology
6 min read

Paying attention to ADHD– is it really just a fad?

Media fixation with ADHD caught Henna Cundill’s eye, so she decided to investigate its struggles and superpowers.
From a darkly shadowed face, a single illuminated eye stares.
Brands&People on Unsplash.

In a feat of irony, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (commonly known as ADHD) is now getting a lot of attention. For example, between 28 and 31 January The Times newspaper published one article per day about ADHD. Intrigued, I looked back over the past few months, and I found that The Times has averaged 8 to 10 articles per month which are either partly or exclusively about this topic. These range from celebrity diagnoses to handwringing over the “troubling rise” in incidents of the condition, to concerns about parents gaming the system to get their children disability payments or extra time in exams.  

With all this media hype, it is little wonder that some commentators are inclined to dismiss ADHD as a fad. Scroll through the comments beneath each article, and you will reliably find the rallying cry of, “We didn’t have ADHD in my day!” followed by the patient responses of those who try to correct this fallacy.  

While the high public profile of ADHD is new, the condition itself is not. As early as the mid-1700s a Professor of Medicine called Melchior Adam Weikard was describing patients who were “unwary, careless, and flighty” – behaving in ways governed by impulse, and showing poor skills in punctuality, accuracy, and having an inability to complete tasks, to the detriment of their mental health. His description is of its day. For example, and somewhat amusingly, Weikard (himself German, but at this point living in Russia) also described his patients as follows:  

Compared to an attentive and considerate person such a jumpy person may act like a young Frenchman does in comparison to a mature Englishman. 

Even so, Weikard did not unconsciously adopt all the prejudices and stereotypes of his context: he broke firmly with existing medical consensus when he diagnosed these patients as having a “dysregulation in cerebral fibres” – rather than attributing their difficulties to astrological misalignments or demon possession.  

By characterising ADHD as a brain-based condition, Weikard was ahead of his time, and we’ve come a long way since then. This is not the place to chart the whole biography of ADHD, suffice to say that when someone rolls their eyes and declares dismissively, “We didn’t have ADHD in my day…” – they are either over 300 years old or not talking like a mature Englishman, even if they read The Times.  

The negative side of the condition as being in a constant fight with one’s own thoughts and senses – these are doughty opponents, they always know where to find you, and they only sleep when you do. 

Another thing that is not new, despite what cynical commentators might seek to imply, is the treatment of some aspects of ADHD with medication.  

Doctors have been prescribing amphetamines to patients with ADHD since at least the 1950s. Yet now those medications are in short supply. Contrary to the media hype, fewer than 1 in 10 people with an ADHD diagnosis take prescribed medication, but for some of those who do it can be a lifeline – calming down a washing machine mind that is stuck on constant spin.  

One acquaintance of mine has taken to anxiously touring the local pharmacies, driving to neighbouring towns and villages, desperate to get her prescription filled.  

Another is passing her own tablets on to her son, whose prescribed supply ran out sooner. Sharing prescription medication is, I am duty-bound to add, an illegal practice – but it is hard to expect a parent to medicate themselves whilst seeing their own child struggle to attend school, to complete exam papers and to just generally feel (and I quote) “like a normal person.”  

People who have ADHD sometimes describe the negative side of the condition as being in a constant fight with one’s own thoughts and senses – these are doughty opponents, they always know where to find you, and they only sleep when you do.   

This is not to overlook that there are positives to ADHD too – it is often pointed out that the condition entails a degree of “superpower.” A person living with ADHD may have an incredible ability to focus on one difficult problem to the exclusion of all else, and thus solve it, perhaps devising creative solutions that elude those with a more pedestrian style of thought.  

Also, it is common for people who live with ADHD to be dynamic conversationalists, with high social intelligence and empathy, priming them for success at tasks like broadcasting and debating. Many elite athletes also live with ADHD and say that they able to strive for excellence due to their restless energy and resilience in the face of tough training regimes.  

Given the mixed bag of struggles and superpowers, there is a raging debate about whether ADHD should even be considered as pathology, or just as a neurodivergent way of being human. I suspect there is no right or wrong answer to this – for each person who lives with ADHD it depends on their own experience and how they feel it helps or hinders them to live the life they choose. Neither is it a binary choice: more than one of my own acquaintances who live with ADHD has described themselves as being in a “love-hate relationship” with their neurodivergence.   

ADHD challenges me to unfold my mind too – to become ever more aware and appreciative of the fact that there are many ways to be human. 

Neurodiversity, like any kind of diversity, challenges the way we live to together in communities, choosing or refusing to show empathy towards those who are perceived as ‘other’. There are several places in the Bible where human interconnectedness is likened to the human body – made up of many different parts, with each member dependent on the other for the wellbeing of the body as a whole. In one of his letters, St Paul wrote, “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? Or if the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?” Society needs problem solvers, communicators, high achievers, even while society also needs people who can structure, plan and maintain consistency – and above all, society needs these different neurotypes to work together with a certain amount of mutual understanding and trust.  

Reflecting further on the body metaphor, Paul also wrote this: “If one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers with it.” It is estimated that about 5 per cent of people in the UK has ADHD, so it is likely that includes someone you know. The majority don’t take regular meds, but if you are connected to someone who is usually reliant on these, the next few months may be a time of particular stress and anxiety, as the current medication shortage is expected to continue into late spring. This affects not just those living with ADHD, but all of us, as we live together in our families, communities, and networks. Not everyone chooses to be open about having an ADHD diagnosis, but if they are, now might be a good time to ask them how they experience this condition, both with its positives and negatives, and how you can support them if they are managing without their usual prescription. 

The body metaphor, and Paul’s teaching around it, reminds us that diversity is no accident, God has always been attentive to those who feel divergent or far from the centre, as Jesus affirmed when he announced his ministry would be for the poor, the prisoners, the disabled and the oppressed. The psalmist too, observes that God’s attention and concern for us is so complete, that one is “…hemmed in, before and behind” – even if one strays to the very ends of the Earth, or drives to the pharmacy in the next village. Thus, while the media circus may be new, we can be sure that God has always been attentive to those with ADHD, and wider society is called to be likewise. 

Writing for The Times, Esther Walker describes ADHD as “…the health story that keeps unfolding.” Well, certainly every time I unfold my newspaper, there it is again. But ADHD challenges me to unfold my mind too – to become ever more aware and appreciative of the fact that there are many ways to be human: usually complex, sometimes difficult, often brilliant, and always interconnected.  

Essay
Comment
Community
Nationalism
7 min read

I was angry and you called me Gammon: Gary from Blackpool, Charlie Kirk, and all these flags

A triptych of three faces of wrath poorly heard and poorly expressed

John is a Salvation Army officer and theologian,

Marchers carry British, English and Israeli flags
Unite the Kingdom marchers.
Met Police.

William Blake once warned: 

I was angry with my friend; 
I told my wrath, my wrath did end. 
I was angry with my foe: 
I told it not, my wrath did grow. 

Blake understood that unspoken—and, more precisely, unheard—wrath does not wither. Left untended, it grows. Its bitter roots tentacle around grievance; neglect waters it, and violence ripens as its fruit. Much like Blake’s tree, the wrath spreading through towns in this nation, and beyond, springs from seeds of anger. It is not irrational. It is cultivated in betrayal, frustration, and systemic disregard. 

This essay is a triptych. Three panels, three faces of wrath poorly heard and poorly expressed. In England, it riots in the streets and hangs from lamp posts. In America, it narrows into bullets. These are not isolated curiosities but variations on the same Western fracture — anger left unheard, curdling until it explodes. 

Wrath, of course, is not the same as anger. Anger is a natural passion, a flare of the soul in the face of injury or injustice. It can be righteous when governed by love, as even Christ was angry at hardened hearts. Wrath, by contrast, is anger left to harden — anger unspoken, unheard, or indulged until it festers into a vice. Scripture names it as both the fire of God’s judgement and, in humanity, a deadly sin. Wrath is anger that has ceased to heal and has become scar tissue. 

Panel I: Gary from Blackpool 

Enter “Gary from Blackpool”. 

He was a London commentator’s caricature of provincial ignorance—“1 GCSE, two brain cells, and three teeth.” 

A screenshot of a tweet.

The tweet was deleted, but not before the sneer had spread. Gary was a meme. He doesn’t exist, and yet he does; there are loads of “Garys” in Blackpool. 

And Gary is angry. 

His wrath first erupted in St John’s Square in the summer of 2024. When he raised a St George’s flag on a roundabout, it was not swaggering nationalism but a pathetic attempt to claim a place in a nation that no longer cares about people like him. 

Blackpool’s collapse has been much-storied: once thriving, now one of the most deprived. Reports and documentaries measure poverty, chart prospects, and speculate on futures. The town is endlessly narrated. 

Gary is not. 

Yet his story mirrors that oft-told collapse. Poverty has scarred him visibly: the teeth, failing health. Gary’s life expectancy: 69, more than a decade shorter than elsewhere. He’s scarred invisibly too, in narrowed hopes and disillusion. These are not individual failings but markers of systemic neglect: underfunded schools, crumbling services, an NHS that doesn’t reach him. Dentist appointments in Blackpool are rarer than hens’ teeth, which are in better condition than Gary’s. 

The England Gary remembers is gone. In its place stands a society he no longer recognises: multicultural, politically sensitive, shifting away from its past. A Daily Mail headline once told him, “Garys are heading for extinction” while Muhammad, in all its spelling variants, had become the most common baby name

And then the boats. Images looping on his screen: more change he cannot control. His Brexit vote promised to take back control; his refusal to vote ever again, a gesture of resignation. 

Because they don’t care about him. They hadn’t even cared for the girls. Now he saw the same system ushering them into clinics to become boys. 

Gary and those like him, through their anger, reveal a politics that has abandoned them, economics that offer no hope, and a culture that makes them strangers in their own country. Rioting is no cure; it tears open wounds without healing. But the response is illuminating: in 2011, they prompted soul-searching; in 2024 and 2025, they brought only ridicule. The tweet exposed a national reflex: to mock rather than listen. That sharpened the bitterness. 

Wrath here does not whisper or wait. It riots. 

 

Panel II: Charlie Kirk 

Gary may never have heard of Charlie Kirk, but Kirk’s rhetoric channelled the very anxieties that defined Gary’s world—about loss, displacement, and neglect. This resonance helps explain how his voice travelled so widely. 

I didn’t watch Charlie Kirk either. His reels surfaced on Instagram or YouTube now and then, but it wasn’t my algorithm that latched onto him. It was my four nephews’—aged sixteen to twenty-two, two in Kent, two in New Zealand—imagination he captured, even if not always their agreement. Young men across the globe, caught in the fast cadence of an American voice. 

When I saw the news, my reaction surprised me. It was strangely visceral for someone who had never featured in my life in the way he had theirs. I felt sick. Because he was dead. Because he wasn’t a politician behind glass or a general behind medals. He was public, certainly, but also strangely normal. And he had children, both younger than my youngest, and a wife. 

And he had the guts to speak to people. Theo Von said he “tweeted with his feet.” How many of us can say we say what we believe as vociferously face to face as we might be brave enough to do on social media? He was visible. Accessible. Flesh and blood with people, not just pixels. I think this is partly why he appealed to my nephews. I’ve seen Facebook friends of their generation posting tributes, then engaging courteously and constructively with those who insisted on quoting Kirk out of context. For them, defending him has not been rage but dialogue. 

And then the gun. 

Charlie’s killer pulled a trigger. Wrath had narrowed into single, precise bullets with slogans on them. But this was not justice, not even protest. It was wrath corrupted into murder; an execution. 

Wrath here does not riot. It narrows into bullets. It turns cannibal. 

What will this spilt blood birth in those who listened, watched, believed? 

 

Panel III: Flags in Hartlepool and Horden 

And here, in England, it is the flags. 

In America, flags are furniture. They’re on every porch, every school, every stadium. But in Hartlepool and Horden, when flags multiply on streetlights, and red crosses are painted onto white roundabouts, they do not feel ordinary. They are a display of patriotism that feels out of character here. They feel ominous. 

They do not shout; they whisper. Every day. A slow, stubborn signal of belonging and defiance. Not the riot of Gary. Not the bullet for Charlie. But something quieter, somehow more enduring. Wrath sewn into fabric, taking root in silence as surely as Blake’s tree, its persistence echoing Gary’s resentment, its quiet endurance unsettling in a way different from the bullets that struck Charlie. When they thicken in certain places, when they layer and cluster, they become atmosphere. 

A Union Jack flag on a lamppost.

Union Flags made it onto some streetlights I walk past with my daughter in Newcastle, on the way to the swimming pool. “What do they mean?” she asked. For some, pride. For others, threat. For most, perhaps nothing at all. And then they were torn down, leaving a frayed seam, a dangling strip of tattered cloth still tied to the upright metal. That felt even more ominous. Not simply a sign of division, but of reaction. And do you notice, where they are hung only as high as a ladder will reach, they look almost like flags at half-mast? As if beneath the defiance there lingers a subconscious grief. 

And so the question lingers: what will come of it all? What future is being staked out? Are these new buds on Blake’s poisonous tree? 

Some flags are celebrated, raised over civic buildings as sacraments of a new national creed. 

Other flags are torn down, left to fray on lamp-posts, almost threatening in their persistence. 

Wrath here does not riot or narrow. It takes root. 

This is England, isn’t it? 

 

A benediction: I was angry 

And how might anger, left unheard before it hardens into wrath, speak with the voice of Christ? 

I was angry, and you called me gammon. 
I was angry, and you called me woke. 
I was angry, and you heard only your politics, 
not my pain. 
 
I was angry, and you argued about tribes and sides. 
I was angry, and you measured me as vote, as threat, as cause. 
I was angry, and you did not really listen to me. 
 
Truly I tell you: 
when you saw the angry and called them only left or right, 
you understood nothing. 
You did not know me. 
 
And these will go away still unheard, 
their wrath growing strong in the shadows, waiting to erupt. 
 
But those who bore the anger of the poorly heard, 
who listened without contempt or fear, 
This too is England. I am found there. 

 

This article was first published on John Clifton’s SubStack. It is reproduced by kind permission of the author.

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