ADHD is often seen as a clearly defined disorder, but in reality we find ourselves in a large gray area. The classification says something about behavior, but not about the person behind it. There is no hard dividing line, no biomarker, no single cause. Yet we organize care as if that boundary were sharp.
Early in my career as a primary care doctor I became fascinated by ADHD. Not only by the behavior, but above all by what lies beneath it. I worked within mental health care for a long time and wrote the book Dokter is het ADHD? (Doctor, is it ADHD?), in which I explored this subject further. What became increasingly clear to me: ADHD is not a diagnosis in the classical sense, but a description of symptoms. A label that says something about how someone functions, not about who someone is.
In practice you see great variation. There is a group of people who really get stuck and benefit from treatment. But there is also a large group for whom context, stress, sensory processing and coping play at least as big a role. Yet responsibility is often placed with the Primary Care Doctor, while the complexity actually calls for a broader interpretation.
A recent article in the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde (Dutch Journal of Medicine) confirms this picture: ADHD has no natural boundary. The diagnosis always remains a judgment of probability. And yet this classification determines access to care, medication and recognition. That does not sit right. Because perhaps the question should not be: “does someone have ADHD?”, but: “to what extent is there dysfunction, and what does someone need?”
In my book Doctor’s Orders: Partner with Your Soul, I go deeper into this different way of looking. Not the person as a sum of symptoms, but as a soulful whole of body, personality and soul. I show how symptoms can be signals of imbalance, and how you can recover through connection with yourself. The book offers insights and practical tools for more calm, self-knowledge and resilience. An invitation to look beyond the label.
Do we truly look at the person behind the diagnosis…
or do we stay stuck on the label?
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