November 25, 2025 • 22 mins
Are we turning ordinary childhood struggles into “disorders”? In this gripping conversation with child psychiatrist Dr Sami Timimi, we unpack the rise of ADHD, autism, anxiety — and the cultural story that’s quietly reshaping how parents see their kids. If you’ve ever wondered whether your child actually needs a diagnosis or just needs more connection, this episode will hit home.
Dr Timimi challenges the medicalisation of childhood, explains how labels can limit hope, and offers four powerful principles for supporting kids without pathologising them. This one will stay with you.
KEY POINTS
- Why “normal” is a moving target — and why that matters for parents.
- How subjective definitions in mental health fuel overdiagnosis.
- The risks of labels: internalised identity, lowered expectations, and unnecessary interventions.
- Four parent principles:
- Don’t try too hard — avoid the trap of hunting for problems.
- Don’t fear emotions — distress is part of growing up.
- Prioritise relationship over behaviour control.
- Beware concept creep — when clinical words invade everyday parenting.
- What’s driving the explosion in ADHD, autism, and neurodiversity narratives.
- Why today’s kids may be the most pathologised generation in history.
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE
“When distress is medicalised, it steals our hope.” — Dr Sami Timimi
RESOURCES MENTIONED
- Searching for Normal by Dr Sami Timimi
- Insane Medicine by Dr Sami Timimi
- Happy Families resources: happyfamilies.com.au
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS
- Pause before pursuing a label — ask what your child might be expressing, not what disorder they “fit.”
- Create more emotional space — sit with their feelings instead of fixing them.
- Strengthen connection rituals — closeness buffers distress.
- Use everyday language — avoid clinical terms for normal childhood behaviours.
- Look at the environment first — school, stress, sleep, and relationships often explain what diagnoses can’t.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
My book of the Year this year is called Searching
for Normal. It's by Sammy to Mimy. He works in
the UK as a child and adolescent psychiatrist and psychotherapist,
and it's taken me a couple of months to get
through this one. There's some pretty heavy concepts. At times,
it feels like you're reading more of an academic book
than a a popular trade book that you buy on
(00:27):
the shelves, and yet the conversation about mental health, the
conversation about diagnoses, about neurodiversity, trauma, and so much more.
It may be one of the most important books that
is on bookshelves at the moment. So today a conversation
with an author that I have been so excited to
talk with, Sammy to Mimy. That's coming up in just
a sec on the Happy Families podcast. Stay with us, gooday,
(00:51):
Welcome for the Happy Families podcast. Real Parenting Solutions every
single day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast, Dr Sammy
to Mimmy's new book is called Searching for Normal. It's
a new approach to understanding mental health, distress and neurodiversity,
and it asks a question that every parent is quietly
wondering have we started treating normal childhood struggles as medical problems?
(01:15):
Has psychology become too medicalized? After thirty five years in
child and adolescent psychiatry, Doctor to Mimmy has seen how
quick diagnoses like ADHD in autism and anxiety can sometimes
overshadow what kids really need, which is understanding and connection
and support. He helps parents to tell the difference between
genuine mental illness and the very real pressures of growing
(01:36):
up in today's world. In the book, he says, your
child isn't broken or abnormal. Psychiatric labels are cultural inventions,
not biological destiny. When distress is medicalized, it steals our hope.
But if we can find another story, we can break
the cycle that has trapped too many for too long.
Doctor to Mimy, so good of you to join me
(01:58):
on the Happy Family's podcasts.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm delighted to
be here.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
So as I said in the intro, I was reading
your book, I had a few pages to go, and
then your publicist got in touch and said, would you
like to interview this man on your podcast? And I
just thought, oh my goodness, what a great opportunity. How
can I say no, I've loved the book. In the book,
you argue that much of what we label as a
disorder may actually be an understandable human response to difficult circumstances,
(02:24):
and immediately, in the context of ADHD and depression and anxiety,
I thought, this is the kind of thing that is provocative,
it's volatile, It's the kind of thing that a lot
of parents are going to take potentially offense at, because well,
we love our labels, and in the current psychological state
(02:44):
that we're in, there seem to be more and more
people who are saying, my child is definitely not right.
So I'd love for you to talk a bit about
how parents can tell the difference between ordinary distress or
ordinary hyperactivity and impulsivity, the typical ways that you want
and behave, versus a real clinical concern that needs extra help.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
One of the things that I was trying to get
across in my recent book Searching for Normal, is one
of the difficulties of trying to figure this stuff out
is that we don't really have an understanding of what
we mean by things like normal. So I know the
(03:27):
title of the book is searching for Normal, but the
idea of normal assumes that we have an understanding of
what we mean by normal?
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Is there a problem with that definition normal? Like from
a clinical or mental health sense? What can be problematic
with definitions like normal?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
The problem is all the definitions that we use in
mental health are subjective and therefore their concepts that are
and be expanded in all sorts of different directions, because
we don't have what you would call empirical anchors, something
(04:09):
definite in the physical world that can make you differentiate
between something that's a problem in the hardwiring, if you like,
of the brain or the body, from things that aren't.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Can you got a little deeper on that?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
The problem then becomes because our definitions are all subjective,
we literally don't know what we're talking about when it
comes to mental health, and it becomes in the eye
of the beholder. And the thing that we all have
in common is that when we have various issues, various
problems that we're trying to understand, is that we are
(04:49):
meaning making creatures. And the frameworks that we use to
make sense of these presentations of things that worry us,
of things that can us are very powerful in terms
of how we then understand and how we then react,
and how we then imagine what the type of problem
(05:14):
that the person is experiencing is all about. The thing is,
you can't see a thought under the microscope. So one
of the difficulties for all parents, and one of the
things that I say to parents when I meet with
them is that one of the things that I can't
do for you is deal with guilt, because all good
(05:36):
parents feel guilty most of the time. That's just something
that we have to accept because we love our children
and we're surrounded by these narratives that are in our
society at the moment that make us imagine that there
are all these disorders and problems and that you should
(06:00):
should identify them early and that you should intervene early.
So you can't blame parents who are wanting to go
down these pathways.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Ah, totally right. But what are some of the problems
or issues that can arise if parents do choose to
go down the pathway of early identification and intervention.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
The problem is, if you go down these pathways, there
is a danger that your children are going to be
exposed to the issues of labeling. And sociologists have known
about the problems with labeling and the power of labeling,
and then you're exposing your child to the potential harms
(06:41):
that can come from them internalizing an idea, and you,
as a parent, and the teachers and all the other
people who they're going to come into contact with internalizing
this idea that there's something wrong, that there's something broken,
that there's something about them that means that they're unable
to function in society as it's made at the moment.
(07:04):
So rather than being able to help parents tell the
difference between a clinical problem and a non clinical problem,
which I think is, you know, that depends on each
person's situation and what's going on in that family, in
that young person, in their peer group, in their school,
(07:25):
and so on. What I would give some pointers to
are a few things that I think would be helpful
for parents to keep in mind in helping them negotiate
this difficult area because we're so surrounded by this narrative
that there's all these vulnerabilities and potential disorders lurking in
(07:47):
the background. So my first tip would be, don't try
too hard, because we live in a society that puts
pressure on us and our children to perform, and the
problem is we can then see our children and or
ourselves as primarily vulnerable, and then we get drawn into
(08:07):
noticing all sorts of ways in which their mental or
behavioral health could go wrong, and we could then be
launched into as seeming never ending search for the right
diagnosis or the right treatment, and in doing that we
risk collecting labels and the various accompanying interventions. So that's
one thing I would say, Please don't try too hard.
(08:30):
I think when we're very worried about our children, when
we're driven to guilt, there is the temptation to intervene unnecessarily.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
What's the second one.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
The second thing I would suggest to parents is don't
fear emotions. When we put emotions in the class of
problems that can only be solved by special expertise, like
a specific therapy or worse, as I said, psychiatric medication,
what we risk in doing that is losing agency and
(09:00):
alienating ourselves from parts of ourselves that are to be
experienced rather than feared. Our job as parents, if we're
going to allow our children to grow and develop psychologically,
is to understand that we can't prevent all suffering disappointments,
(09:21):
and our job instead is to be there when our
children have these difficulties in their life, when they're going
through emotional upheaval and emotional distress, is to be there,
to be patient, allow this to happen, and help them
on their way.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
You've mentioned the first two things, don't try too hard
and don't fear emotions. Tell us the third idea.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
The third thing that I would say is see nurturing
relationships as a greater priority than controlling behavior, because when
we're distressed by behavior of our children, we often have
we can get through to them so that they change
in a way that would stop them doing the sorts
of behaviors that we're considering, things that we're worried or
(10:10):
frustrated about or irritated by. Unfortunately, when our attempts to
kind of control behavior can accidentally damage a relationship. So
for me, one of the things that I've put as
a priority in my work with young people and families
where there's a lot of worry or where there's a
lot of worry about behavior and behavior that is causing
(10:34):
distress or frustration or irritation to the parents, is to
focus on emotional flow, So on the emotional dynamic between
the young person and their parents or their family more widely.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Okay, so we've got don't try too hard, don't fear emotions,
prioritize nurturing the relationship versus controlling the behavior. I love
this one. It's something that I still struggle with with
my own kids, So I love this one. Tell us
your fourth and final one.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
The final one that I would put in there is
beware of what I call concept creep. So concept creep
is something that's been happening quite a lot in our
culture recently, where concepts that were originally developed in clinical world,
whether it's in psychiatry or psychotherapy, have sort of leaked
(11:27):
out into our culture. My kids, when they were growing
up they're now adults, started talking about some years ago
feeling depressed, not feeling miserable, not feeling frustrated, but feeling
So that was I think one of the first examples
(11:48):
of words that came from a clinical world and crept
into the everyday life. But we've got all sorts of
concepts that have now crept in from emotional regulation, emotional intelligence, meltdown,
so children now have meltdowns, they don't have tantrums. So
(12:08):
these kind of more ordinary bits of language and the
reason why I think you should be careful of starting
to think in those terms is that they draw you
towards an idea that what your kid is experiencing is
outside of the realm of the ordinary, side, of the
realm of what we consider to be the social world
(12:32):
of expectations, and in the realm of a potential problem.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Today and the Happy Families Podcast, we're talking to doctor
Sammy Timimi, who has over three decades experience working with
children and families as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, and it's
the author of the new book Searching for Normal. After
the break, we'll talk neurodiversity and the increase in ADHD
and autism diagnoses. Stay with us. This is the Happy
(13:06):
Families Podcast Today talking with doctor Sammy to Mimi, author
of Searching for Normal, which I reckon is one of
the most important books at the moment that covers issues
such as mental health, trauma and neurodiversity, ADHD and autism diagnoses,
and just the idea of neudiversity. There's been an extraordinary
increase in exposure to a conversation about that. I would
(13:27):
say probably over the last let's say ten to twelve years.
What do you think is driving the surge and what
should parents do about it?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
There are many factors that would be driving this, and
it is quite an extraordinary expansion. What has happened over
the years is what I call a mutation of constructs.
And this comes back to what I was saying earlier
that because the definitions are subject because they refer to
(14:02):
behaviors rather than you know, you don't get a blood
test for ADHD and get a brain scan. What you
do is you have a questionnaire. Or in terms of
autism diagnosis, there's also some observational tools, and I've done
all the training in all of these, and I'll be
quite honest with you, they're no better than pop psychology
(14:26):
quizes that you might find on even the ones that
appear to be more sophisticated, they're just more sophisticated versions
of the same thing. They don't have any empirical anchors.
And what that means is that they can be expanded.
And they've become expanded in two directions, So they can
(14:48):
become expanded horizontally by including lesser degrees of behavior presentations,
so lesser behaviors can be included, or lesser severe behaviors
can be included, and then they can be expanded vertically,
which means that new populations that previously didn't have the
(15:09):
likelihood of these diagnoses enter into the realm of diagnosis.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Sammie, can you give us some ideas, some examples in
terms of ADHD and autism.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
With ADHD and you can see a very similar pattern
with autism that happened a few years later. It starts
out as in my clinical lifetime, I trained in child
psychiatry back in the mid nineties, and we didn't diagnose
anybody with ADHD. There was something called hyperkinetic disorder which
(15:41):
was focused on levels of behavior, so activity levels, and
this was a very rare disorder. So in my first
nine months of child Psychiasha, I didn't see anybody who
was diagnosed with this condition. And it was also at
that time considered that if you had signific learning difficulties,
that would automatically exclude you from such a diagnosis, because
(16:05):
it was considered that learning difficulties by itself would be
a reasonable explanation for why you might be struggling with
your behavior. Then the concept of ADHD got imported from
the US and it starts out with a prevalence rate
of about zero point five percent of children. Over the years,
(16:25):
this expands and eventually it becomes about three percent of children.
At this point it still thought of as what we
call a developmental disorder, which means that the expectation was
as children grow up, most of them would grow out
of it. However, by the early two thousands in this country,
(16:46):
the concept of adult ADHD was beginning to creep in.
So this is your example of beginning to vertically expand.
So the idea that it was a lifelong disorder and
something that was not likely to recover from was happening.
And now the concentration was also on ideas of attention,
(17:09):
so attention comes more into the picture levels of attention.
So this is a new behavior being brought in. And
then in the last five to ten years, but particularly
in the last five years, the concept of masking allows
it to go even further. So the concept of masking
is you actually have the symptoms, but you should don't
(17:31):
show them.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Because you're keeping them hidden and chilled them inside until
your home and it's safe to let alone exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
And so this allows a greater degree of women to
come into the diagnostic category women and girls. So by now,
the it's expanded to you know, five percent in some countries,
ten percent of the population and rising, and in doing
(17:59):
that it also starts to become incorporated into identity politics.
So as it expands, you also got a group of
people who understandably rejected some of the medicalization of this,
(18:20):
but instead still kept the whole idea that there's something
neurological going on. So that's where the neurodiversity comes in,
which I think is a Bonker's concept. I'll be perfectly
frank with you, because we're all neurodiverse, but this idea
that we can separate a group who are neurodiverse, who
are unable, if you like, who have a problem functioning
(18:43):
in society as it's made at the moment, and a
group who are neurotypical in which society is made for us. Well,
all of us are struggling with the way society is.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
So if you look at the big picture, what are
the potential drivers of this expansion.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
They are, to my mind, partly a crisis of economy,
So of people are feeling insecure, pessimistic about the future,
so there's a greater degree of distress. This level of
distress level of insecurity that people have becomes a potential
(19:19):
something to exploit for profit.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yeah, it's a gold mind for big pharmaceuticals.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
And it's been a gold mine. And this is why
I call what's happened the mental health industrial complex, because
in the last few years there's been a rapid expansion
of expensive assessments, of books, of podcasts, of magazines, of
(19:45):
self help manuals, of online programs. Not just the pharmaceuticals,
but there's a whole raft of things. I really feel
the current generation of young people growing up I have
been the most pathologized generation that there has been, and
(20:08):
that really worries me because I think we've been setting
young people up and there's so much evidence now to
suggest that that's what's happening. We're setting young people up
to be disempowered and sometimes to be unnecessarily disabled.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
It's a solid take, it's a provocative take. It's the
kind of take that gets people to sit up and
pay attention, and I'm sure that there's going to be
a lot of people that have a lot to say
about it. Personally, I think the book is needed. I
think it's a vital insight into where we are from
a mental health perspective in the current climate, and a
great call to action in terms of how we can
make some changes. Sammy, I could talk to you all day,
(20:47):
I reckon if you and I could sit down over
a coffee table with a couple of nice drinks and
some snacks, you and I could probably talk for two
weeks and solve all the problems of the world. It
would be so much fun. But for now we're going
to have to leave it there, simply because time gets
the better of us. Thank you so much for being
generous with your time and having a chat with us
about your new books, Searching for Normal.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Thank you so much for inviting me.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
The book Searching for Normal is available right now everywhere
that you buy your books. One of my favorite books
of the year. There's no way for me to say
it without being any more excited about it than that
I just loved the book. Doctor Sammy to Mimmy, practicing
consultant child an adolescent psychiatrist and psychotherapist, working previously with the
NHS in the UK. He's written forty book chapters, mainly
(21:31):
in academic books, although his most recent one, before Searching
for Normal, was called Insane Medicine. How the mental health
industry creates damaging treatment traps and how you can escape them.
Check out Searching for Normal and new approach to understanding
mental health, distress and neurodiversity wherever you buy your books.
The Happy Family's podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from
Bridge Media. Mimhammonds provides research admin and a whole lot
(21:52):
of other support and if you'd like morofo to make
your family happier, please visit us at happyfamilies dot com
dot a u
My book of the Year this year is called Searching
for Normal. It's by Sammy to Mimy. He works in
the UK as a child and adolescent psychiatrist and psychotherapist,
and it's taken me a couple of months to get
through this one. There's some pretty heavy concepts. At times,
it feels like you're reading more of an academic book
than a a popular trade book that you buy on
(00:27):
the shelves, and yet the conversation about mental health, the
conversation about diagnoses, about neurodiversity, trauma, and so much more.
It may be one of the most important books that
is on bookshelves at the moment. So today a conversation
with an author that I have been so excited to
talk with, Sammy to Mimy. That's coming up in just
a sec on the Happy Families podcast. Stay with us, gooday,
(00:51):
Welcome for the Happy Families podcast. Real Parenting Solutions every
single day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast, Dr Sammy
to Mimmy's new book is called Searching for Normal. It's
a new approach to understanding mental health, distress and neurodiversity,
and it asks a question that every parent is quietly
wondering have we started treating normal childhood struggles as medical problems?
(01:15):
Has psychology become too medicalized? After thirty five years in
child and adolescent psychiatry, Doctor to Mimmy has seen how
quick diagnoses like ADHD in autism and anxiety can sometimes
overshadow what kids really need, which is understanding and connection
and support. He helps parents to tell the difference between
genuine mental illness and the very real pressures of growing
(01:36):
up in today's world. In the book, he says, your
child isn't broken or abnormal. Psychiatric labels are cultural inventions,
not biological destiny. When distress is medicalized, it steals our hope.
But if we can find another story, we can break
the cycle that has trapped too many for too long.
Doctor to Mimy, so good of you to join me
(01:58):
on the Happy Family's podcasts.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm delighted to
be here.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
So as I said in the intro, I was reading
your book, I had a few pages to go, and
then your publicist got in touch and said, would you
like to interview this man on your podcast? And I
just thought, oh my goodness, what a great opportunity. How
can I say no, I've loved the book. In the book,
you argue that much of what we label as a
disorder may actually be an understandable human response to difficult circumstances,
(02:24):
and immediately, in the context of ADHD and depression and anxiety,
I thought, this is the kind of thing that is provocative,
it's volatile, It's the kind of thing that a lot
of parents are going to take potentially offense at, because well,
we love our labels, and in the current psychological state
(02:44):
that we're in, there seem to be more and more
people who are saying, my child is definitely not right.
So I'd love for you to talk a bit about
how parents can tell the difference between ordinary distress or
ordinary hyperactivity and impulsivity, the typical ways that you want
and behave, versus a real clinical concern that needs extra help.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
One of the things that I was trying to get
across in my recent book Searching for Normal, is one
of the difficulties of trying to figure this stuff out
is that we don't really have an understanding of what
we mean by things like normal. So I know the
(03:27):
title of the book is searching for Normal, but the
idea of normal assumes that we have an understanding of
what we mean by normal?
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Is there a problem with that definition normal? Like from
a clinical or mental health sense? What can be problematic
with definitions like normal?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
The problem is all the definitions that we use in
mental health are subjective and therefore their concepts that are
and be expanded in all sorts of different directions, because
we don't have what you would call empirical anchors, something
(04:09):
definite in the physical world that can make you differentiate
between something that's a problem in the hardwiring, if you like,
of the brain or the body, from things that aren't.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Can you got a little deeper on that?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
The problem then becomes because our definitions are all subjective,
we literally don't know what we're talking about when it
comes to mental health, and it becomes in the eye
of the beholder. And the thing that we all have
in common is that when we have various issues, various
problems that we're trying to understand, is that we are
(04:49):
meaning making creatures. And the frameworks that we use to
make sense of these presentations of things that worry us,
of things that can us are very powerful in terms
of how we then understand and how we then react,
and how we then imagine what the type of problem
(05:14):
that the person is experiencing is all about. The thing is,
you can't see a thought under the microscope. So one
of the difficulties for all parents, and one of the
things that I say to parents when I meet with
them is that one of the things that I can't
do for you is deal with guilt, because all good
(05:36):
parents feel guilty most of the time. That's just something
that we have to accept because we love our children
and we're surrounded by these narratives that are in our
society at the moment that make us imagine that there
are all these disorders and problems and that you should
(06:00):
should identify them early and that you should intervene early.
So you can't blame parents who are wanting to go
down these pathways.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Ah, totally right. But what are some of the problems
or issues that can arise if parents do choose to
go down the pathway of early identification and intervention.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
The problem is, if you go down these pathways, there
is a danger that your children are going to be
exposed to the issues of labeling. And sociologists have known
about the problems with labeling and the power of labeling,
and then you're exposing your child to the potential harms
(06:41):
that can come from them internalizing an idea, and you,
as a parent, and the teachers and all the other
people who they're going to come into contact with internalizing
this idea that there's something wrong, that there's something broken,
that there's something about them that means that they're unable
to function in society as it's made at the moment.
(07:04):
So rather than being able to help parents tell the
difference between a clinical problem and a non clinical problem,
which I think is, you know, that depends on each
person's situation and what's going on in that family, in
that young person, in their peer group, in their school,
(07:25):
and so on. What I would give some pointers to
are a few things that I think would be helpful
for parents to keep in mind in helping them negotiate
this difficult area because we're so surrounded by this narrative
that there's all these vulnerabilities and potential disorders lurking in
(07:47):
the background. So my first tip would be, don't try
too hard, because we live in a society that puts
pressure on us and our children to perform, and the
problem is we can then see our children and or
ourselves as primarily vulnerable, and then we get drawn into
(08:07):
noticing all sorts of ways in which their mental or
behavioral health could go wrong, and we could then be
launched into as seeming never ending search for the right
diagnosis or the right treatment, and in doing that we
risk collecting labels and the various accompanying interventions. So that's
one thing I would say, Please don't try too hard.
(08:30):
I think when we're very worried about our children, when
we're driven to guilt, there is the temptation to intervene unnecessarily.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
What's the second one.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
The second thing I would suggest to parents is don't
fear emotions. When we put emotions in the class of
problems that can only be solved by special expertise, like
a specific therapy or worse, as I said, psychiatric medication,
what we risk in doing that is losing agency and
(09:00):
alienating ourselves from parts of ourselves that are to be
experienced rather than feared. Our job as parents, if we're
going to allow our children to grow and develop psychologically,
is to understand that we can't prevent all suffering disappointments,
(09:21):
and our job instead is to be there when our
children have these difficulties in their life, when they're going
through emotional upheaval and emotional distress, is to be there,
to be patient, allow this to happen, and help them
on their way.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
You've mentioned the first two things, don't try too hard
and don't fear emotions. Tell us the third idea.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
The third thing that I would say is see nurturing
relationships as a greater priority than controlling behavior, because when
we're distressed by behavior of our children, we often have
we can get through to them so that they change
in a way that would stop them doing the sorts
of behaviors that we're considering, things that we're worried or
(10:10):
frustrated about or irritated by. Unfortunately, when our attempts to
kind of control behavior can accidentally damage a relationship. So
for me, one of the things that I've put as
a priority in my work with young people and families
where there's a lot of worry or where there's a
lot of worry about behavior and behavior that is causing
(10:34):
distress or frustration or irritation to the parents, is to
focus on emotional flow, So on the emotional dynamic between
the young person and their parents or their family more widely.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Okay, so we've got don't try too hard, don't fear emotions,
prioritize nurturing the relationship versus controlling the behavior. I love
this one. It's something that I still struggle with with
my own kids, So I love this one. Tell us
your fourth and final one.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
The final one that I would put in there is
beware of what I call concept creep. So concept creep
is something that's been happening quite a lot in our
culture recently, where concepts that were originally developed in clinical world,
whether it's in psychiatry or psychotherapy, have sort of leaked
(11:27):
out into our culture. My kids, when they were growing
up they're now adults, started talking about some years ago
feeling depressed, not feeling miserable, not feeling frustrated, but feeling
So that was I think one of the first examples
(11:48):
of words that came from a clinical world and crept
into the everyday life. But we've got all sorts of
concepts that have now crept in from emotional regulation, emotional intelligence, meltdown,
so children now have meltdowns, they don't have tantrums. So
(12:08):
these kind of more ordinary bits of language and the
reason why I think you should be careful of starting
to think in those terms is that they draw you
towards an idea that what your kid is experiencing is
outside of the realm of the ordinary, side, of the
realm of what we consider to be the social world
(12:32):
of expectations, and in the realm of a potential problem.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Today and the Happy Families Podcast, we're talking to doctor
Sammy Timimi, who has over three decades experience working with
children and families as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, and it's
the author of the new book Searching for Normal. After
the break, we'll talk neurodiversity and the increase in ADHD
and autism diagnoses. Stay with us. This is the Happy
(13:06):
Families Podcast Today talking with doctor Sammy to Mimi, author
of Searching for Normal, which I reckon is one of
the most important books at the moment that covers issues
such as mental health, trauma and neurodiversity, ADHD and autism diagnoses,
and just the idea of neudiversity. There's been an extraordinary
increase in exposure to a conversation about that. I would
(13:27):
say probably over the last let's say ten to twelve years.
What do you think is driving the surge and what
should parents do about it?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
There are many factors that would be driving this, and
it is quite an extraordinary expansion. What has happened over
the years is what I call a mutation of constructs.
And this comes back to what I was saying earlier
that because the definitions are subject because they refer to
(14:02):
behaviors rather than you know, you don't get a blood
test for ADHD and get a brain scan. What you
do is you have a questionnaire. Or in terms of
autism diagnosis, there's also some observational tools, and I've done
all the training in all of these, and I'll be
quite honest with you, they're no better than pop psychology
(14:26):
quizes that you might find on even the ones that
appear to be more sophisticated, they're just more sophisticated versions
of the same thing. They don't have any empirical anchors.
And what that means is that they can be expanded.
And they've become expanded in two directions, So they can
(14:48):
become expanded horizontally by including lesser degrees of behavior presentations,
so lesser behaviors can be included, or lesser severe behaviors
can be included, and then they can be expanded vertically,
which means that new populations that previously didn't have the
(15:09):
likelihood of these diagnoses enter into the realm of diagnosis.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Sammie, can you give us some ideas, some examples in
terms of ADHD and autism.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
With ADHD and you can see a very similar pattern
with autism that happened a few years later. It starts
out as in my clinical lifetime, I trained in child
psychiatry back in the mid nineties, and we didn't diagnose
anybody with ADHD. There was something called hyperkinetic disorder which
(15:41):
was focused on levels of behavior, so activity levels, and
this was a very rare disorder. So in my first
nine months of child Psychiasha, I didn't see anybody who
was diagnosed with this condition. And it was also at
that time considered that if you had signific learning difficulties,
that would automatically exclude you from such a diagnosis, because
(16:05):
it was considered that learning difficulties by itself would be
a reasonable explanation for why you might be struggling with
your behavior. Then the concept of ADHD got imported from
the US and it starts out with a prevalence rate
of about zero point five percent of children. Over the years,
(16:25):
this expands and eventually it becomes about three percent of children.
At this point it still thought of as what we
call a developmental disorder, which means that the expectation was
as children grow up, most of them would grow out
of it. However, by the early two thousands in this country,
(16:46):
the concept of adult ADHD was beginning to creep in.
So this is your example of beginning to vertically expand.
So the idea that it was a lifelong disorder and
something that was not likely to recover from was happening.
And now the concentration was also on ideas of attention,
(17:09):
so attention comes more into the picture levels of attention.
So this is a new behavior being brought in. And
then in the last five to ten years, but particularly
in the last five years, the concept of masking allows
it to go even further. So the concept of masking
is you actually have the symptoms, but you should don't
(17:31):
show them.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Because you're keeping them hidden and chilled them inside until
your home and it's safe to let alone exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
And so this allows a greater degree of women to
come into the diagnostic category women and girls. So by now,
the it's expanded to you know, five percent in some countries,
ten percent of the population and rising, and in doing
(17:59):
that it also starts to become incorporated into identity politics.
So as it expands, you also got a group of
people who understandably rejected some of the medicalization of this,
(18:20):
but instead still kept the whole idea that there's something
neurological going on. So that's where the neurodiversity comes in,
which I think is a Bonker's concept. I'll be perfectly
frank with you, because we're all neurodiverse, but this idea
that we can separate a group who are neurodiverse, who
are unable, if you like, who have a problem functioning
(18:43):
in society as it's made at the moment, and a
group who are neurotypical in which society is made for us. Well,
all of us are struggling with the way society is.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
So if you look at the big picture, what are
the potential drivers of this expansion.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
They are, to my mind, partly a crisis of economy,
So of people are feeling insecure, pessimistic about the future,
so there's a greater degree of distress. This level of
distress level of insecurity that people have becomes a potential
(19:19):
something to exploit for profit.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yeah, it's a gold mind for big pharmaceuticals.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
And it's been a gold mine. And this is why
I call what's happened the mental health industrial complex, because
in the last few years there's been a rapid expansion
of expensive assessments, of books, of podcasts, of magazines, of
(19:45):
self help manuals, of online programs. Not just the pharmaceuticals,
but there's a whole raft of things. I really feel
the current generation of young people growing up I have
been the most pathologized generation that there has been, and
(20:08):
that really worries me because I think we've been setting
young people up and there's so much evidence now to
suggest that that's what's happening. We're setting young people up
to be disempowered and sometimes to be unnecessarily disabled.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
It's a solid take, it's a provocative take. It's the
kind of take that gets people to sit up and
pay attention, and I'm sure that there's going to be
a lot of people that have a lot to say
about it. Personally, I think the book is needed. I
think it's a vital insight into where we are from
a mental health perspective in the current climate, and a
great call to action in terms of how we can
make some changes. Sammy, I could talk to you all day,
(20:47):
I reckon if you and I could sit down over
a coffee table with a couple of nice drinks and
some snacks, you and I could probably talk for two
weeks and solve all the problems of the world. It
would be so much fun. But for now we're going
to have to leave it there, simply because time gets
the better of us. Thank you so much for being
generous with your time and having a chat with us
about your new books, Searching for Normal.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Thank you so much for inviting me.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
The book Searching for Normal is available right now everywhere
that you buy your books. One of my favorite books
of the year. There's no way for me to say
it without being any more excited about it than that
I just loved the book. Doctor Sammy to Mimmy, practicing
consultant child an adolescent psychiatrist and psychotherapist, working previously with the
NHS in the UK. He's written forty book chapters, mainly
(21:31):
in academic books, although his most recent one, before Searching
for Normal, was called Insane Medicine. How the mental health
industry creates damaging treatment traps and how you can escape them.
Check out Searching for Normal and new approach to understanding
mental health, distress and neurodiversity wherever you buy your books.
The Happy Family's podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from
Bridge Media. Mimhammonds provides research admin and a whole lot
(21:52):
of other support and if you'd like morofo to make
your family happier, please visit us at happyfamilies dot com
dot a u
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