04/09/2026
“Heritability of ADHD runs around 74 percent, which puts it among the most easily inherited conditions in all of psychiatry and medicine.”
The World Federation of ADHD International Consensus Statement brought together 80 professionals from 27 countries and examined 208 conclusions from meta-analyses and very large studies.
This is what emerged:
ADHD is highly heritable.
Twin studies, the gold standard for investigating heritability, consistently point in the same direction.
Inherited does not mean broken.
ADHD isn’t something society created.
The traits associated with ADHD, novelty seeking, intense curiosity, divergent thinking, rapid pattern recognition, spontaneity, energy, creativity and hyperfocus, are not defects.
They simply don’t work well with every environment we have constructed.
A child who struggles to sit still for six hours can thrive when they’re moving, building, solving, creating and exploring.
An adult who struggles with repetitive work can come alive when they’re innovating, leading, teaching, performing or responding to the unpredictable.
The very traits that create difficulty in one setting can become extraordinary strengths in another.
After more than 20 years working with adults and young people across different settings, I’ve watched far too many people internalise the message that they are the problem.
Too loud.
Too distracted.
Too emotional.
Too impulsive.
Too intense.
Too much.
Not trying hard enough.
Eventually, they stop asking “What environment allows me to flourish?”
And start asking:
“What’s wrong with me?”
That breaks my heart.
One distinction matters enormously:
Hypervigilance caused by trauma is not ADHD.
A nervous system constantly scanning for danger because of trauma is responding to a different process from an inherited neurodevelopmental difference.
We can understand both without confusing the two.
ADHD isn’t caused by trauma or 'bad parenting'.
It isn’t caused by screens.
It isn’t caused by modern society.
And it isn’t caused by children simply not being disciplined enough.
But society absolutely determines how disabling those inherited differences become.
Some environments punish difference relentlessly.
Others harness it.
Stop asking: "How do we make this person fit?"
Instead ask: “What happens when we stop trying to make people fit a mould they were never designed for?”
Because some of the people we’ve spent years trying to correct, contain and quiet aren’t defective.
They’re different.
And different brains have built extraordinary things.
Stop trying to extinguish the difference.
