REFRIGERATOR MOMS REDUX?

Don't blame ADHD on stressed moms.

- CHELSEA CONABOY

“WHAT DOES IT mean? What is it, exactly? Is it real?” That's what Joe Rogan asked Dr. Gabor Maté about attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder when he hosted the Canadian family physician and bestselling author on his podcast in 2022. A health and wellness influencer known for his nurturing approach to healing from trauma and addiction, as well as his penchant for challenging standard medical advice, Maté had recently published his fifth book, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture, and was making the publicity rounds.

ADHD is real, Maté replied; after all, he, too, has been diagnosed with it, as have two of his children. But then he offered the kind of anti-establishment response tailor-made for Rogan's massive audience: It's just not what the medical establishment claims it to be. “A lot of the so-called experts think about it as...another one of these inherited diseases,” he said. “I say it’s neither an illness nor is it heritable.”

Instead, Maté argued, hyperactivity and poor impulse control develop in particularly sensitive babies who are adapting to stressed parents, especially mothers. Absorbing that stress in infancy causes the child to “tune out,” he told Rogan, and “that tuning out is then programmed into the brain.”

Maté has pushed this idea in interviews with celebrity hosts who together have tens of millions of followers. Clips are shared by Instagram parenting accounts and in Reddit forums, where some therapists praise him as their go-to resource, and some parents express confusion or shame over having triggered their child’s ADHD.

But many experts say there's one big problem with his theory: It's wrong.