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The GuardianHumanityArgentina
The long shadow of Argentina’s dictatorship: she wasn’t who she thought she was – neither was her father | Meaghan Beatley

The long shadow of Argentina’s dictatorship: she wasn’t who she thought she was – neither was her father | Meaghan Beatley

A young activist thought her father’s disapproval of her leftwing views was purely political. Then one evening, a kiss goodbye sent her on a remarkable journey that continues today• Last chance to buy the summer issue of The Long Read magazine, now with 15% off. to orderAs a child, Analía Azic used to pretend she was secretly a princess, the heiress to a magical distant kingdom. In real life, she was the daughter of a greengrocer named Juan Antonio Azic and a demure housewife named Esther Abrego. The family lived in the province of Buenos Aires, which, as anyone from the area will tell you with a dash of pride, is not the city of Buenos Aires but its rougher neighbour. Analía was not royalty, but she had an iron will and audacity out of proportion to her small stature.Analía cared little for grades at the Ladies Institute of the Sacred Heart, where she rolled with the dominantes, girls who hiked their school skirts up so high they served as little more than belts, and dreamed of the weekend when they could finally trade in their school uniforms for designer jeans and tight tank tops and sashay into Electric Circus, the one local club that allowed in minors. There, Analía would climb atop the speakers and dance, then leap back down to toy with the boys from the Argentine air force’s technical trade school.

16h ago
The GuardianHealth AlertsLondon
The Great ADHD Myth? review – the most controversial show of the year is here

The Great ADHD Myth? review – the most controversial show of the year is here

Dr Max Pemberton isn’t uncompassionate or especially radical, but he assembles a team of medics whose stance on the condition is clear from the off. This is a documentary that will incense and offend manyPresenter Max Pemberton, a psychiatrist in the NHS, Daily Mail columnist and author, and the experts he has assembled, waste no time in setting out their stall in The Great ADHD Myth?. This is a documentary that will incense and offend some of its viewers, and its scepticism regarding ADHD is clear from the outset. “It’s certainly not a medical condition as far as I’m concerned,” says the former president of the Royal College of General Practitioners, Dr Iona Heath. “We’re going to look back and think: did we actually put a chemical cosh on an entire developing generation of brains?” says a neurophysiological psychologist. “The industry around ADHD is about making money at the cost of the misery of others,” says a former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.These represent the three main questions raised by Pemberton. The first is whether ADHD is a neuro-developmental disorder – ie do those diagnosed with the condition have different brains from those without – or whether it is a way of suppressing natural tendencies (especially those of children) and inducing behaviours that society deems acceptable. The second is how doctors should approach treatment, which most often involves amphetamines. “These are controlled drugs,” says consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr Sami Timimi. “There’s good reason why we warn the rest of the population [about them].” The third question is – who benefits from the increase in diagnoses we have seen in the past decade or so? How has ADHD moved from a relatively unknown condition 10 years ago to affecting about 2.5 million people in the UK today (including a 200% increase in people being referred for diagnosis in the past five years)??

2d ago
The GuardianHealth AlertsUnited Kingdom
There is nothing scientific about The Great ADHD Myth? ‘documentary’ | Gina Rippon

There is nothing scientific about The Great ADHD Myth? ‘documentary’ | Gina Rippon

Channel 4’s programme wastes a chance to ask important questions about how ADHD is diagnosed and treated, instead indulging in unscientific methods and conspiracy theoriesWhen Channel 4 announced that it would air a documentary titled The Great ADHD Myth?, an outpouring of fury followed. Despite this, I set out to approach it as a scientist – not just as a scientist whose own work has dealt with developmental disorders, but as someone who has enormous respect for the scientific process and for the importance of evidence-led debate.Channel 4’s press release claimed the documentary sought to determine whether attention deficit hyperactivity disorder was a “genuine neurodevelopmental disorder, or a social construct”. At one level this is a brave enterprise. ADHD is recognised worldwide as a disorder, and among others. Estimates suggest ADHD affects and worldwide. To overturn this consensus would require robust, reproducible findings capable of explaining away decades of genetic, developmental and clinical research. The press release described the documentary as “science-led”, which hinted at just such an enterprise. Was it really science-led?Prof Gina Rippon is emeritus professor of cognitive neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre, Aston University, and the author of The Gendered BrainDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our section, please .

8h ago