When Did ADHD Become a Personality Trait? The Blurred Line Between Neurodivergence and Disability
I have romanticised ADHD.
I've talked about ‘superpowers’. Creativity. Hyperfocus. The ability to think differently.
This isn't because I know nothing about neurodivergence. I spent 13 years working with children, many with ADHD or autism. I know that what looks like distraction, refusal or disorganisation from the outside can conceal an exhausting amount of work underneath.
And still, I'm one of the romantics.
I read I Really Don’t Like How the Internet Talks About ADHD, a Medium article by Sahendra, a writer diagnosed with ADHD.
‘I just want people to stop mixing up a disability with a personality trait,’ he wrote.
Online, he saw ADHD becoming ‘quirky’. Losing your phone. Buying another plant. Too many browser tabs. Creative chaos.
Sahendra isn't against awareness. It helped him seek his own diagnosis. His problem is what happens when awareness turns into an aesthetic.
I wanted to understand better what he meant.
When Everyone Can Relate
Social media has made ADHD extraordinarily relatable.
Research suggests it hasn't necessarily made it accurate. One study of 100 popular ADHD TikToks classified 52% as misleading. Another study examining videos carrying #ADHDtest classified 92% of its sample as misleading.
Who hasn't lost their keys, interrupted somebody, procrastinated over something important, or fallen down an internet rabbit hole?
That's the problem with relatable traits. They're relatable.
But while Sahendra worries that disability is being turned into personality, another argument is moving in almost the opposite direction.
Dr Fiona Cornish, a Cambridge GP, recently wrote to The Times about the sharp rise in young people reporting disability. Almost one in five 16 to 24-year-olds now reports a disability, roughly double the proportion a decade ago.
Cornish questioned whether it was right to classify lifetime characteristics such as autism, ADHD and dyslexia as disabilities. There would always be those at the ‘very severe end’ who needed help, she argued, but the grey area between them and ‘neurotypical’ people was growing.
Her conclusion was striking.
‘We are doing young people a disservice by labelling them disabled and offering them benefits, rather than helping them into work.’
Initially, I could see her point.
The Romantics and the Avoiders
There seem to be two seductive ways for those of us outside neurodivergence to talk about it.
We can romanticise it. Or we can recoil from disability.
Are we labelling people unnecessarily? Lowering expectations? Turning ordinary differences into disorders and telling young people they're less capable than they are?
I recognise the first instinct in myself. Cornish articulates the second.
Sahendra made me wonder whether both can miss the same person.
Numbers don't settle it.
Cornish's figure stands up. Reported disability among 16 to 24-year-olds has roughly doubled over the past decade. What that statistic cannot tell us is why. Diagnoses may have exploded. The evidence doesn't show ADHD itself has.
Having ADHD isn't automatically the same as being legally disabled either. Under the Equality Act, the question is whether an impairment has a substantial, long-term effect on normal day-to-day activities.
Trait. Diagnosis. Disability.
Three things muddled together.
The Same Person, a Different Room
I asked Sahendra whether both things could be happening at once: ADHD being trivialised while the boundary between neurodivergence and disability becomes harder to define.
‘Whether I feel disabled really does depend on the day, the room, who's around me,’ he told me.
Could someone have a disability without always feeling disabled by it?
‘Yes, I do think it’s possible to have a disability without feeling disabled all the time,’ he replied. ‘The environment can remove barriers or create them, and sometimes other people's expectations matter as much as the underlying traits.’
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recognises this too. ADHD impairment can vary according to social context and can sometimes be reduced by changes to education or employment.
Same person. Same brain. Different room.
Diagnosis can unlock particular treatment and support. Meeting the legal definition of
disability can also bring rights to reasonable adjustments.
That complicates Cornish's choice between ‘labelling them disabled’ and ‘helping them into work’.
What if, for some people, recognising the disability is part of what enables them to work?
What Does It Cost?
I put Cornish's argument to Dr Tony Lloyd, a psychotherapist and neurodiversity specialist.
He didn't dismiss it.
‘Of course we are doing young people a disservice, so why don't we do more and spend more to help them into work instead of implying they are workshy, benefit chasing and lacking in resilience?’
Lloyd also questions why some people with ADHD thrive while others don't. For him, that means looking beyond the diagnosis at health inequalities and the environments in which people are expected to function.
It echoes Sahendra's lived experience.
Cornish specifically mentions Personal Independence Payment (PIP) in her letter. But PIP isn't awarded because somebody has an ADHD diagnosis. Eligibility depends on how a condition affects everyday activities, and people can receive it while working.
Disability isn't the opposite of ability.
Research with adults with ADHD has identified creativity, energy and hyperfocus among characteristics some participants value. Those same characteristics can be advantageous or troublesome depending on the context.
So perhaps my ‘superpower’ language wasn't wrong because I saw strengths.
It was wrong if seeing them made it easier to overlook the cost.
Because Sahendra's story is about the cost.
People see a missed deadline. He describes the hours spent stuck despite desperately wanting to begin.
They see disorganisation. He experiences a brain that won't prioritise despite his efforts.
They see someone functioning normally for eight hours. They don't see what it took to look ‘normal’ for eight hours.
That's what disappears when ADHD becomes either a personality trait to celebrate or a disability label to fear.
The Person Who Isn't Laughing
Sahendra doesn't want ADHD pushed back into the shadows. Awareness helped him. He also acknowledges why self-recognition can matter, particularly for people who struggle to access assessment.
He's asking us to notice who our conversation about neurodivergence can leave behind.
Behind ‘hyperfocus’ might be someone unable to direct that focus towards the thing they desperately need to do.
I can romanticise neurodivergence.
Cornish can reasonably ask whether we're broadening disability until the word loses meaning.
Tony can ask why, if so many young people are struggling, we're concentrating on the label rather than what would help them participate.
There's another question.
What Is Life Costing the Person We're Talking About?
For every viral ‘this is so me’ ADHD video, Sahendra wrote, ‘there's someone watching it who isn't laughing’. Someone who has spent years wondering why everything feels harder for them than it seems to for everyone else.
‘I wish we talked about that person more.’
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