Wes Streeting is wrong. The real ADHD crisis is a system that fails people like me

When Wes Streeting suggests that the UK may be “overdiagnosing” autism and ADHD, it sounds like a call for thorough analysis of where the problem lies. But for thousands of people like me, this public message could have stopped us from receiving the support we now rely on to stay well, work, and participate fully in society.

I wasn’t overdiagnosed, I was misdiagnosed and misunderstood until I turned 40. Like many neurodivergent women, I cycled through medical appointments and mental health services without any of them truly speaking to each other.

My ADHD traits were misread as anxiety. My autistic traits were misunderstood as inflexibility or depression. My hormonal changes were mistaken for a mood disorder, and I was offered antidepressants instead.

This disjointed system isn’t unique to me. It’s the experience of countless women who fall through the cracks because our health narratives don’t fit the traditional medical template built largely around male physiology.

Understanding that I am both autistic and ADHD (AuDHD) finally gave coherence to my life. It helped me understand why my nervous system reacts differently, why my hormonal cycle influences my executive functioning and mood, and why ADHD medication affects me in ways that women’s health services were never prepared to anticipate.

Once I understood my neurotype, I could finally understand what I needed: trauma-informed care, hormone-aware medication management, and environments that match my sensory and energy rhythms.

My diagnoses unlocked a roadmap to finding support that would otherwise be unknown to me.

That’s why the current political narrative is so dangerous. It frames diagnosis as the problem when the true crisis is upstream: chronic underfunding, fragmented services, and a failure to modernise healthcare around human complexity.

Even with a diagnosis, many swiftly “fall off the cliff” afterwards. We prescribe ADHD medication without accounting for hormonal shifts. We assess autism without recognising masking. We treat trauma, hormones, and neurodivergence as separate issues when, in real life, they are profoundly intertwined.

Women and marginalised groups are paying the highest price. We are medicated with drugs designed around male physiology. We are assessed through tools built for male presentations. We are left to navigate systems that treat hormones, trauma, and neurodivergence as separate issues, even though in real life they are inseparable.

Rising diagnosis isn’t a scandal - rising misdiagnosis is.

If the government wants fewer people on sickness benefits, it must stop blaming labels and start asking why people fall out of work in the first place.

People are not trapped by benefits. They are trapped by inaccessible workplaces, rigid structures, and environments that ignore sensory and energy rhythms. They are trapped by systems that intervene only after a crisis.

Solutions can include early workplace accommodations, flexibility around energy-based productivity, trauma-informed workplaces, and integrated healthcare that treats people as whole humans rather than separate problems delegated to separate departments.

But these require investment in prevention, not putting the blame back on people who need support.

A review that focuses on “overdiagnosis” risks pushing people back into silence. A review that centres the lived realities of women, trauma survivors, and neurodivergents could finally build a system that keeps us well.

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Dr Samantha Hiew is a scientist, the founder of ADHD Girls, and the author of The Tip of the ADHD Iceberg.

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