Inside Our ADHD Minds review – Chris Packham’s revelatory show couldn’t be more crucial

Inside Our ADHD Minds is simply a follow-up, of sorts, to Chris Packham’s memorable 2023 documentary, Inside Our Autistic Minds. In that earlier film, the wildlife and quality presenter utilized his ain acquisition of neurodiversity to assistance different radical research and show the interaction of autism connected their lives, for the payment of their family, friends and a wider TV audience. Inside Our ADHD Minds uses the aforesaid look – Packham walks done woodland arsenic helium explains thing important, anecdotes astir his ain life, informative chats with experts, and creation therapy successful the signifier of expressive abbreviated films – to excavation deeper into the condition, and, successful the pursuing episode, dyslexia.

The effect is simply a beauteous and revelatory programme which feels acquisition without being didactic; Packham rejects the sanction “attention shortage hyperactivity disorder”, for example, explaining that it is not a shortage of attention, but a conflict to modulate it. The documentary takes a two-pronged approach. Packham interviews experts, who present the model of information. One suggests that having ADHD is similar having six televisions successful your brain, blaring astatine the aforesaid time, and trying to ticker them each astatine once, and explains that radical with ADHD person little dopamine levels and an accrued hazard of anxiousness and depression. Another adept talks astir however boys and girls often contiguous ADHD symptoms otherwise astatine school, and however diagnoses were heavy gendered until shockingly recently, which mightiness beryllium wherefore it is much communal for women to person a diagnosis astatine a aboriginal age.

But the superior absorption is connected 2 individuals, Henry and Jo, who are fixed the accidental to articulate their interior worlds by making abbreviated films astir them, overmuch similar the participants successful Inside Our Autistic Minds. Henry is successful his aboriginal 20s, and was diagnosed with ADHD astatine school, during his A-levels. He tried the medicine helium was prescribed, but did not similar the mode it made him feel. He works arsenic a circuit usher successful Soho, and you tin spot wherefore helium is bully astatine it: helium is simply a garrulous and energetic presence. But to Packham, helium is unfastened astir his difficulties successful managing day-to-day beingness and his fears that his household don’t cognize who helium truly is. He sometimes forgets to eat. His country is simply a mess. He worries that helium is lazy, incapable, and helium worries astir what his parents would deliberation if they knew the information astir him.

Crisis constituent … Chris Packham with Jo, who was diagnosed late. Photograph: Joe Myerscough/BBC

Jo, meanwhile, was diagnosed aboriginal successful life, aft years of being incapable to settle, and being told that she was “too much”. She explains that she has had 14 antithetic careers, and talks astir reaching a situation constituent astatine work, wherever she couldn’t bash what she was determination to do. It wasn’t until her eldest girl told her astir a person astatine assemblage with ADHD that Jo started to realise what mightiness beryllium going on. For her, medicine did help. But, similar Henry, determination are overwhelming feelings of shame and sadness; determination is simply a consciousness for some that they are often misunderstood, adjacent judged negatively.

This programme is tuned successful to the complexities and sheer assortment of neurodiversity and idiosyncratic experience. There are gendered, generational, biology and possibly adjacent class-based differences here. Henry is seeking the knowing of his parents, who person been supportive passim his teenage years, but is resistant to immoderate consciousness that they mightiness privation to “fix” him. He appears to beryllium asking for acknowledgment that helium operates, and volition proceed to operate, successful a antithetic way. In his film, helium is mounting retired a applicable task: helium wants his household to spot however helium lives and what supposedly mean activities, specified arsenic remembering to be an important meeting, are similar for him.

For Jo, the task is much emotional. She would similar her household to spot the interaction of her diagnosis and to recognize the grief that she feels, astir the idiosyncratic she mightiness person been had she received assistance and enactment earlier successful her life. The menopause, she explains, “played havoc” with her ADHD and this enactment a strain connected her relationships. She is inactive moving done guilt and grief. For some Jo and Henry, talking to Packham, past making their films, connection a signifier of self-expression that they person struggled to find elsewhere.

Inside Our Minds comes astatine a important time. One pistillate interviewed here, astatine an creation store successful Bristol for women with ADHD, says that her doc suggested she had been influenced by TikTok fads. BBC-ishly, this documentary says thing of the far-right, anti-woke rhetoric that has present hitched parts of its rickety wagon to what it calls an overdiagnosis of neurodiversity. Nevertheless, Packham and his squad connection a calm and wide refutation of these harmful notions, simply by telling real-life stories, and utilizing the humanising powerfulness of creator expression.