'I cannot cope with people demanding all this money'

Lucy Rogers tells Harriette Boucher that those with ADHD need more support to help manage their finances responsibly

- HARRIETTE BOUCHER

When Lucy Rogers* finally opened a letter she had been ignoring for months, informing her that her utilities bill was increasing, it was the final straw. “I remember I just walked into work and burst into tears... I said: 'I can't physically afford to live anymore.”

“At that point, I was so tired and so exhausted, and functioning as an adult was so challenging because of my ADHD,” she adds.

In debt for most of her adult life, Ms Rogers would enter her flat each day and avoid looking at her mailbox, unable to bear the mound of letters demanding she pay her bills. Some of them were marked red, meaning urgent, and they would typically only get opened when her mother came around and made her do so.

The pressure was relentless, and with each unpaid bill, anxiety piled up. She kept taking out more loans and was stuck in a cycle she couldn't find the mental space to escape. As the cost of living rose and her direct debits crept up by £100 every six months, the burden became unbearable.

“I finally broke, and I finally couldn’t carry the weight of that relentless terror and pressure of having to meet all of those obligations,” she told The Independent. “Honestly, that day I thought about killing myself, I just thought: 'I can’t handle this anymore, I cannot cope with people demanding all this money from me.”