My suicidal thinking wasn’t depression – it was my ADHD 

Content warning: discussions of suicidal thinking and ideation

Every year as ADHD Awareness Month rolls around, we see the same tired social media posts from politicians, corporations, and charities talking about how we should be supported, and everyone should be more aware.

The issue is, most of them are plenty aware of ADHD, and are using their power to oppress ADHDers further instead. This October, one of the forms this takes is Wes Streeting announcing a new review into ‘overdiagnosis’ of mental health and neurodivergence – something we know is a complete and utter fallacy, used to deny benefits and strip our healthcare.

Just one example of ADHD care from the wrong angle

I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2021, after I learnt about it myself. It was six years after I received my autism diagnosis in a psychiatric unit, and it should have been obvious that they came as a pair when I talked constantly about having six thoughts and two songs rattling around my head at once. This, and my constant inattentiveness, were put down to ‘autism-associated anxiety’.

As grateful as I was – and am, to this day – to have received any diagnosis at all, the years spent with one diagnosis and not the other meant my understanding and the ways I tried to support myself were completely misaligned with my reality.

This included, more seriously, the fact that I couldn’t get a hold on my suicidal thoughts. I experience passive suicidality most of the time: this refers to suicidal thinking that has no plan in place, rather is made up of more feeling. But often, it would suddenly flare and become dangerous in a way that didn’t make sense to anyone around me. Therapy didn’t seem to change it coming up, nor my medication.

In reality, these sudden flares were emotional dysregulation, experienced as part of my ADHD and causing extremely intense feelings, impulsivity, and what others may term ‘mood swings’. When my brain sees no other way out, or thinks it would be easier not to exist, that’s where it goes — normally in relation to criticism, rejection, or something that is just entirely too overwhelming. The former elements can be attributed to Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, an intense feeling felt in ADHDers.

Maybe it isn’t overdiagnosis, maybe it’s not understanding our root needs

When I finally learnt that these suicidal thoughts were not depression, I started to handle them differently. We worked on strategies that would calm me down and get me through those patches, and planned for them with those around me.

When I thought it was depression causing this, I couldn’t manage it. I felt entirely confused about the timing and the on-off again nature. I felt like a failure for the fact that medication and therapy couldn’t seem to even begin to change it.

Perhaps, when we look at neurodivergent people, we shouldn’t think about it as overdiagnosis, but instead, understand our traits in the right light, and professionals not wasting time being unable to help us because our care is coming from the wrong angle?

Suicidality in autism & ADHD has to be taken seriously

My story is not to say that autistic and ADHD people cannot have depression that causes suicidal thinking – that isn’t the case at all. In fact, we are more likely to experience depression and suicidal thinking than our peers.

However, I do think it is critical to understand that suicidality can have different roots in brains that are not built for this world. Health professionals and those assessing or caring for us need to have a basic understanding of different manifestations of these needs. They need to understand how to support us with them, from how simply we talk about it to how we make support plans and stop seeing it as something that needs fixing.

The overdiagnosis review is wasting time and resources

It’s clear that the overdiagnosis review is only to back up the benefit cuts. Last week, when the review was announced, Keir Starmer told Radio 4:

would we not be better putting our money in the resources and support that is needed for mental health than simply saying, it’s to be provided in benefits?

If this is genuinely the case, where are all these resources? Where is the care and the clearing of the waiting lists? He’s right – benefits should not be the only answer. But they cannot be taken and replaced with nothing.

The review is to be vice-chaired by controversial doctor, Sir Simon Wessely. He is the same man who said Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) had a psychological root, and the chances are high that it will lean into the rhetoric that neurodivergence and mental health conditions are over diagnosed.

There are endless reasons why autism, ADHD and others are being diagnosed more, including higher awareness and changes in diagnostic understanding. To spend time, money and energy on trying to prove otherwise rather than funding broken systems, the government is doing the exact opposite of what Keir Starmer is arguing.

The issue is not overdiagnosis. It’s every other problem we can see: earlier misdiagnosis, lack of understanding, lack of resources — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Featured image via the Canary