Challenging assumptions on ADHD

Consultant Psychiatrist Dr Sami Timimi interviewed by by The Light

- by RICHARD HOUSE

RICHARD House (RH): Tell us briefly about your clinical and academic career, and your main specialisms.

Sami Timimi (ST): I've been a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist (and psychotherapist) in the National Health Service since 1997. I research and write from a critical psychiatry perspective, and have published over 150 articles in mainstream journals, many book chapters, and have written seven books, co-edited four and co-authored two more. My latest book, Searching for Normal, was published in March.

RH: Your great work on the over-medicalisation of human distress has influenced a generation of critical psychologists and psychiatrists. Tell us about your work on so-called ADHD, and the continuity of that work with your more recent research and writings.

ST: Back in the mid-1990s, stories about ADHD were appearing in the UK press telling us how far behind we were, compared to the U.S., in recognising and treating a disorder called attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In UK child psychiatry at that time, we generally referred to 'behavioural problems' in children, and thought about them as being the result of relational and social causes. ADHD implied something different: that there was something wrong in the child - specifically, in the child's brain.

In 1995, my supervising consultant asked if I would help him with some research. He wanted to study the prevalence of ADHD among the local population (in a borough of East London) that had a high number of Afro-Caribbean background families. He asked me to conduct a literature review. I collected a big bundle of research papers, reviews, theoretical articles and historical tracts.