Having ADHD affects my whole life in a big way.
Being a father and a husband...
My ability to be organised, or my ability to plan is...
You know...
It's a combination of things: Of poor concentration...
That's the attention side.
And it's a problem of control in other ways as well.
Children tend to be very impulsive.
They do the first thing that comes into their head.
That can make them hard to control and it can make them overactive.
It's that combination of poor control of attention...
and poor impulse control and over-activity.
That's what defines ADHD.
Someone with ADHD for me has a handful of pebbles.
This is how my brain works.
You throw all of them in the pond.
So this is then a hundred opportunities and a hundred thoughts to build on.
One minute I can be hyperactive, all over the place and interrupting myself.
The next minute I can be in my own bubble.
When I'm thinking of so many different things in my head.
As a child, it is a very isolating thing in our society.
You can become alienated from peers because you're misunderstood.
People don't know you.
You can't communicate yourself properly to them.
When my first child was born, he was difficult.
But I thought it was just because he was a baby.
As he grew older, he was just your typical child.
He didn't sleep, cried a lot and was very active.
At first I thought I was a bad parent.
As he got older, everyone, including my own parents, told me so.
People often say it's due to the parents not being able to...
to educate their own children.
They still think ADHD is a kids' thing that people just grow over it...
and that it's not a problem in adults.
The ability to manage my emotions has fallen flat by the time...
If I've gone through a particularly demanding day.
Another very important part of ADHD are the emotional symptoms.
Not everyone realises that it is another core part of ADHD.
If you talk to most adults with ADHD...
they describe getting irritable, frustrated and angry...
much more easily than other people.
Wherever you look, there are differences.
If you look at the symptoms, all of them have a diagnosis of ADHD.
But if you look at the patients, none of them are the same.
The other important thing to remember is that ADHD is a dimensional trait.
You can have people with milder ADHD and people with more severe problems.
We also see a lot of people who are misdiagnosed.
In fact, in our adult clinic, about 80% were not diagnosed in childhood.
For me, it was a relief to be diagnosed.
I've gone through the majority of my life not knowing I had ADHD.
As a consequence of that, I've been very hard on myself.
I was told I have ADHD, dyslexia and dyspraxia.
That came as a surprise to me.
Like most people, I knew nothing about ADHD and wanted to know more.
Critics will definitely say we're over-diagnosing ADHD.
But in some groups, we're still not good.
As I said, it's the adults in particular.
And if you look at gender, it's mainly boys who are diagnosed.
Because in females, ADHD just looks a little bit different.
What everyone is looking for, is really a treatment that works...
and that may cure patients.
What we have right now, are for example...
drugs that suppress the symptoms of ADHD.
We don't have anything that really cures patients.
The medication is amazing.
It's amazing because it's helped me get my emotions under control as well.
I used to be all over the place with my moods and things.
The medication has been tremendous.
For many adults, having medication can make a huge difference to them.
They can be focused, less restless and calmer.
It can have a real impact.
There are people who need medication just to enable them to function.
They may actually like it when they're not working.
They may be quite happy not to be on treatment.
Medication was something that I didn't...
I wasn't a big fan of it when I was a teenager...
because I felt like it made me boring.
If I take little breaks throughout the day, where I just do breathing exercises...
where I just focus on my breath...
which I know is called mindfulness, and which is nothing revolutionary...
but it will stop me from getting to the end of the day where I am a wreck.
You need to be open-minded about it.
Consider medication, but don't neglect other forms of treatment.
I medicate myself daily, but I also meditate.
Drugs are the most powerful way of modifying the core...
of modifying the ability to concentrate, and focus, and hold yourself back.
The psychological treatment would be much more about...
how given that you've got a problem...
and how you get around it, how you understand yourself...
how you control yourself...
how you understand the impact you have on other people, and allow for that.
And how you can talk to yourself in different situations...
and instruct yourself about what to do.
Whether non-pharmacological treatments work on their own...
or whether they need to be combined with other treatments...
I think it really depends on the person.
For some individuals, some children, one treatment might be sufficient...
and other people might need a combination.
This is also a very important factor in research.
At the moment we conduct a lot of randomised control trials.
They use a racehorse approach. Is one treatment better than the other?
But what we actually do see that there is a lot of variability in treatment response.
One treatment may work for one child and another may work for another.
I think we really need to do more research into that as well.
What predicts who will respond to which treatment?
You have to work together and share data to make progress.
This understanding is taking hold.
That means we are getting the means to work together in larger consortia.
They give us the possibility to look at the disorder from different angles...
and bring this knowledge together.
For me, the last few years as the president of ADHD Europe...
was the first time I really understood the scientific community.
I finally got involved with them and that's a huge step forward.
Through the funding of the EU Commission and these wonderful consortiums...
we're now working with them.
It's so important that scientists talk to patients.
For us, the most important thing is to have the evidence and knowledge...
that allows us to challenge people that say ADHD doesn't exist.
This is something we try to exploit in these consortia that we run more often.
Patient organisations helping us, for example, in recruiting patients...
but also designing the research. What is the question we should answer?
One thing that I think is very important to focus on in research...
is to move away from the deficit-based model of ADHD.
and to move towards a strength-based model.
This involves moving away from a view that...
disproportionally emphasises the deficits in individuals with ADHD...
towards a balanced view that highlights the strength that these individuals have.
There are various artistic traditions where wandering of the mind...
are actively advocated and pursued.
What's interesting is, when you come to the world of psychiatry...
the narrative is slightly different and I want to know why...
a brain like mine is considered to be a disorder.
It brings out creativity. That's how I see it.
It brings out my creativity and it makes me feel really happy.
I definitely keep a spontaneous ability, the ability to improvise on the spot.
I keep hold of my hyperactivity, my excess energy levels.
The things I wouldn't keep are the forgetfulness and disorganisation...
and my inability to voice my thoughts.
I feel like a universe stuffed within a shoe box.
We should not be constantly telling people with ADHD that they end up in prison.
Some of them do end up in that system...
but it's usually those that don't get that early help and support.
It's important to spread awareness.
First of all so children can be recognised early...
so people can understand that they are not behaving like that...
because they want to or because they are naughty.
It's because they can't do anything else.
Understanding the nature of the problem is going to reduce stigma and blame...
and will reduce self-stigma and self-blame.
I think it is important to train the teachers...
to detect the symptoms and teach them skills that allow them to handle ADHD.
Employers need to understand it better.
There are simple things you can do at work, to have a quiet environment...
to find out the optimum way that somebody functions...
and facilitate them within the work place.
There's an enormous scope to find a way forward.
But at the root of it all is education.
For me at least, it's the thing the thing that stops me from being open about ADHD...
because there is an awareness of ADHD...
but for me the awareness consists of a lot of misconceptions.
To have a diagnosis of ADHD doesn't mean you're going to have a bad life.
With the right help you could have the most fantastic life.
There are great kids, they are stimulating, interesting and intelligent.
The future for ADHD treatment, if people are able to get the balance between...
things like drugs, mindfulness or exercise...
then we stand a good chance of having a bright future.