Happy ADHD Awareness Month.
Most of you know that we celebrate ADHD Awareness all year round. This month is currently being dominated by negative media narratives about over diagnosis. The government’s own research concludes that it’s under-diagnosed, but for some reason we keep hearing people question whether there are too many people getting a diagnosis.
The number of people requesting an ADHD diagnosis has definitely increased, but that doesn’t mean that there are too many people being diagnosed. Either people meet the diagnostic criteria or they don’t. The increase in awareness means that there are more people realising that their challenges may be rooted in neurodiversity, particularly amongst women and girls.
Discounting everybody that wasn’t an annoying little boy, would always mean that eventually the rest of the ADHD population would turn up!
Despite being a small independent charity, the team at S.P.A.C.E. have been keeping up to date with the research. Whilst the research has highlighted differences in presentation, people were being told that they can’t have ADHD if they get good grades, that they can’t have ADHD if they’ve never been in trouble with the police (true story), that they can’t have ADHD if they’ve got a good job and many other things that are simply incorrect.
There is no evidence to support any media claims that there are suddenly more people with ADHD. The prevalence of ADHD hasn’t changed and there is evidence to back that up. We’ve also heard the narrative that it’s all over social media and therefore just a trend. Our charity has been around since 2004, years before both Instagram and TikTok, so feel free to ignore those comments as the ignorance / gaslighting that they are.
We’re not sure who benefits from these narratives, all we can do is share accurate information and hope that it find’s its way to those that need it.
Here on our website we do our best to share useful information and give a voice to our community. Here are some of the guest posts we’ve published over the last few years.
ADHD Playlists
We created a family friendly version of our Artists with ADHD playlist. The whole point of the playlist was to let more people know about the number of successful people with ADHD and we’re aware that some of the songs on our playlist contained explicit lyrics, so we created a family friendly version.
Family Friendly ADHD Playlist
Artists with ADHD Playlist
We update the playlists on a regular basis, so please let us now if we’ve missed off any of your favourites.
SPACE Team Photo Gallery
Although Claire is our current Chair, our charity has been led by different people over the years including Michelle, our Founder, Sharyn and Donna.
ND Hub Offer
The local services for those with ADHD and Autism have changed quite dramatically. The Neurodiversity Team in Stockport have created a series of padlets (webpages) that detail the support that is available. The padlets are split by age so we have added links to the Early Years, Children and Young people and Adult (16+) padlets to our useful resources page Although we are aware that we have a lot of parents who are not in Stockport, lots of the information contained in the padlets will still be useful. Other local authorities will have their own information about the services on offer to their residents.
The Stockport team have a newsletter that you can sign up to and have also shared a padlet about the Stockport ND Hub offer
Monthly Meet Ups
We celebrate ADHD awareness all year round. If you have a child with ADHD feel free to join us at one of our in person meet ups or join us online.
Our Meet Up Dates for the rest of the year are:
- Tuesday 13th October 2026
- Tuesday 10th November 2026
- Tuesday 8th December 2026
