09/12/2025
A little article I've had published today in INSIDE TIME. I had 200 words to put in that sidebar to explain ADHD to the prison population 💙
I truly hope I've got the message through.
One of my recently diagnosed ADHD IPP prisoners has rung tonight to say "Just reading that 200 word sidebar you would know you had ADHD".
My genuine hope is that this will bring realisation to a lot of people who have been misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all.
And this will be the start of them freeing themselves of the criminal justice system.
I don't cry about losing my young offender Anthony very often anymore, but I did cry today when I was speaking to somebody about him. It will be 3 years in March since he hung himself in HMP Lowdham Grange. It was only at the inquest I realised I had been angry at the wrong people. It wasn't individuals in that prison. It was the whole prison system that didn't understand ADHD as the very serious psychiatric condition it is.
It wasn't until that day I could understand why they had ignored five, lengthy and detailed, safeguarding risk letters I had put in. They just didn't understand how important and life threatening unmedicated ADHD with dysregulated emotions was.
I will never stop fighting to raise ADHD awareness until everybody is being screened in schools from the age of five and right the way through the CJS.
If you aren't already ADHD screening then please get in touch with us at ADHD Liberty and start saving lives today. Because tomorrow it might be too late. Like it was for Anthony. Forever my Boy 3. The third client I ever counselled at HMP Aylesbury.
