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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)??

1d ago
The GuardianScandalLondon
The Guardian view on the Grenfell Tower fire: Britain is letting companies pass the buck | Editorial

The Guardian view on the Grenfell Tower fire: Britain is letting companies pass the buck | Editorial

Victims received less compensation than shareholders in the company behind its flammable cladding. Parliament must make corporations pay for harm causedThere is something profoundly wrong when the company behind Grenfell Tower’s flammable cladding paid more compensation to its shareholders than to victims of the disaster. Of Arconic’s £86m in Grenfell-related settlements, all but £1.5m was covered by insurers. Hardly enough to make a multinational think again. The company whose product the inquiry found was the “” of the fire’s rapid spread has ended up paying only a fraction of the wider social cost, while the bill for making hundreds of buildings safe falls largely on the state. In June 2017, 72 people – including 18 children – died in London’s Grenfell Tower fire. Almost a decade later, nobody has been criminally charged over its causes. It’s hard to conclude anything but that Britain’s system of corporate accountability is rotten.A new by the thinktank Common Wealth and the financial investigations group FIND suggests putting right this state of affairs in England and Wales by adopting two changes that parliament could enact quickly. The first is a “failure to prevent” law that would make companies responsible for having adequate systems to prevent foreseeable serious harm. The second is to adopt a “punitive damages” approach. Rather than compensating victims for their loss, punitive damages ask what a company should pay for its conduct. Such an award against Arconic could have been used to meet the costs of remediation, the report says, “at no public cost”.

17h ago
The GuardianHumanityEire (Ireland)
Can anyone be too poor to buy a toothbrush? Yes – I know, because that was me | Katriona O'Sullivan

Can anyone be too poor to buy a toothbrush? Yes – I know, because that was me | Katriona O'Sullivan

LBC’s Nick Ferrari can’t see what is stopping people buying a cheap toothbrush, but the grinding reality of living in poverty creates its own prioritiesI don’t listen to Nick Ferrari on LBC very often. His antagonistic way of dealing with complex problems gets me screaming at the radio far too easily. Last month was a perfect example. Someone from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation was on discussing research showing that about 7 million people are , including toothpaste and toothbrushes, because of the cost of living crisis.This did not strike me as a controversial finding. The cost of fuel, heating, food, school, clothes – everything – has gone up, while wages and benefits have not risen enough to keep pace. Ferrari, however, latched on to the toothbrushes. I found myself listening to him talk about the price of cheap toothbrushes in pound shops and at Asda. At times, it sounded like a price-comparison advert. At other times, it sounded like lazy journalism: take a complicated issue, strip it of all context and turn it into something that will generate outrage, clicks and applause.Dr Katriona O’Sullivan is a psychologist, author and professor at Maynooth University. She is the author of the bestselling memoirs and , and is a weekly columnist for the Irish IndependentDo 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 .

18h ago