If ever a mental health diagnosis can be called ‘fashionable’, it’s ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The mere mention of it can trigger moans that it’s nothing but the latest ‘woke’ way to pathologise fidgeting, lack of self-discipline and bad parenting.
So if you’re in that camp who rolls their eyes everytime you hear the term, prepare to be irritated. I’m going to argue this so-called ‘new’ condition is responsible for nothing less than changing the course of British history.
ADHD is real, and it’s had consequences throughout history: few more surprising than the qualities it bestowed upon Winston Churchill.
As an author of psychology and child development books, as well as a Gestalt psychotherapist in training, first – let me say – I know it’s not possible to give an ADHD diagnosis without a full psychiatric assessment. Yet as we understand more about neurodivergency, the possibility that ADHD informed Churchill’s thinking is increasingly entertained by historians, biographers and psychiatrists.
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