The Matt Walsh Show - June 28, 2025


ADHD Is Over Diagnosed ｜ Proof For Your Liberal Friend


Episode Stats

Misogynist Sentences

4

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary

In the past several months, I have predicted that we would see a reported skyrocket in ADHD diagnoses as millions of children are forced to sit and stare at screens all day in lieu of receiving a real education. This week, NBC News reported right on schedule that adhd diagnoses have skyrocketed during the pandemic.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 a shortage of adhd medication is leaving some parents in limbo and they're wondering if they're
00:00:06.700 going to have enough pills to help their children shortage of adhd medications is in a category of
00:00:11.880 its own more than once over the past several months i have predicted that we would see a
00:00:15.920 reported skyrocket we would see a skyrocketing rise of uh adhd diagnoses as millions of children
00:00:24.380 are forced to sit and stare at screens all day in lieu of receiving a real education that's what i
00:00:28.220 predicted i think i said it on the show multiple times i tweeted it uh now usually i enjoy saying
00:00:33.720 i told you so i don't hate saying i told you so i love saying it this is not one of the times where
00:00:37.480 i enjoy saying it this is one of the times where i really do hate saying it but but i told you so
00:00:42.440 this week um nbc news reported right on schedule that adhd diagnoses have skyrocketed during the
00:00:50.200 pandemic the article by olivia solin offers more details starting with an anecdote this is what
00:00:55.160 she this is what she reports it says susan mclaughlin's 12 year old daughter isabella
00:00:59.440 was a straight a student before the pandemic isabella who lives in a suburb the suburb of
00:01:03.200 a suburb of columbus ohio excelled at science and math and was already getting high school credit for
00:01:07.940 algebra but when her school shut down in march and classes shifted to zoom isabella great
00:01:12.340 isabella's grades took a nosedive she signed on for her virtual class from a desk piled high with
00:01:17.400 books papers and stuffed animals and then spent hours trying to clean her room instead of focusing
00:01:21.600 on schoolwork she found herself paralyzed by assignments mclaughlin said but she wouldn't
00:01:25.960 tell her teacher over email that she was struggling as she would have done in person mclaughlin 53 a
00:01:30.420 mother of three from delaware ohio says it was a meltdown after meltdown after meltdown mclaughlin
00:01:34.560 spent months trying to bring more structure to isabella's day by writing lists schedules timelines
00:01:39.000 check boxes but as someone uh as someone who was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity
00:01:43.380 disorder herself a decade ago mclaughlin realized that she was seeing the same behaviors
00:01:47.660 in isabella she thought quote i've got to nip this in the bud isabella is being evaluated by a
00:01:53.660 psychiatrist a process that takes several hours and requires her teachers to fill out questionnaires
00:01:58.740 about her behavior mclaughlin hopes that with an adhd diagnosis isabella will be able to get a
00:02:04.060 prescription for a stimulant medication such as ritalin adderall uh or something like that to
00:02:08.960 alleviate her symptoms okay pausing here for a second strange strange isn't it the child was a straight a
00:02:16.980 student everything was fine then she was confined to a house for a year put in front of a screen
00:02:22.760 and suddenly she has trouble learning she must have a mental disorder yes that must be it no other
00:02:28.960 explanation comes to mind more from nbc news it says two dozen parents pediatricians psychiatrists
00:02:35.140 psychologists and researchers all described a crisis among children suffering from inattention
00:02:38.940 and tanking school performance um data from specialists involved with diagnosis diagnosing and
00:02:45.960 treating adhd show just how much parents are struggling to get help they're flooding an adhd
00:02:50.560 support line with questions and adhd diagnoses and prescriptions for related medications have soared
00:02:55.000 the number of parents calling a helpline set up for um set up by children and adults with attention
00:03:00.620 deficit hyperactivity disorder that's an organization a non-profit that supports people with adhd rose by
00:03:05.660 62 percent since the pandemic started traffic to its website last year grew by 77 percent compared to
00:03:12.780 2019 aetna health a technology company that creates uh creates practice management software for health
00:03:19.040 care providers published research in may drawing on data from its customers that showed an increase in
00:03:23.940 patients aged 13 to 17 who received new diagnosis diagnoses of adhd from the week of march 9th to the
00:03:29.740 week of march 30th the proportion of visits by teenagers that involve first-time adhd diagnoses rose by
00:03:35.460 67 percent that was a similar spike among teenagers especially boys okay it should be i hope clear to
00:03:45.940 most people that it's not a coincidence to find so many children having trouble with inattention and
00:03:50.160 hyperactivity when they're cooped up deprived of their normal outlets like sports and other physical
00:03:54.820 activities and forced to learn through zoom classes you know i suffer quite a bit from inattention
00:04:01.600 when i am forced to sit through even a 15 minute zoom meeting i can't imagine doing it every day for
00:04:06.960 hours and being 12 years old on top of it the trouble here is with is with the final d in adhd that's
00:04:14.920 where i've got an issue or really both d's deficit and disorder okay it's not only wrong but arrogant
00:04:24.340 and cruel to call a child disordered because he's struggling to learn in an environment like that
00:04:30.920 the deficit the deficit the disorder is with the environment not the child it is disordered to
00:04:38.660 lock kids inside to try to teach them through a screen that's disordered kids who struggle with that
00:04:46.060 are healthy it's natural it's healthy to struggle under those circumstances your kids should struggle
00:04:52.780 actually yes it may help um to it may help them sit still to put them on drugs and tranquil
00:05:00.900 them but if you're going to do that and i don't think you should but if you do it don't pretend
00:05:06.980 you're treating an illness or a disorder don't don't don't fool yourself you know you need your
00:05:13.200 kid to sit still and look at zoom for six hours and so you put them on drugs all right i really wish
00:05:19.440 you wouldn't i think it's terrible to do it but if you do at least be honest and do not claim that
00:05:25.220 you're treating a disorder because you know you're not you know that's not what you're doing
00:05:29.240 you're trying to get your kid a competitive advantage in this certain environment or context
00:05:34.160 okay like a guy who isn't good at baseball is not disordered um not thriving in baseball is not a sign
00:05:43.080 of a disorder so if he takes steroids he's not treating an illness he can't say that he suffers
00:05:48.420 from a baseball deficiency no he's just he wants to succeed in this specific specialized environment
00:05:56.520 known as baseball and so he's taking the drug to help him do that it's the same thing here a child
00:06:04.080 who doesn't thrive while staring at a screen for five hours is also not disordered that is not a symptom
00:06:09.560 of a disease you know so putting him on drugs it's like doping it's it's it's just to give him that
00:06:16.300 advantage who is to say that children should thrive in that environment we've decided that we want them to
00:06:25.520 but that doesn't mean they should giving him a drug to help is not a medical decision then even if a
00:06:32.660 doctor prescribes it you're also not doing it to help him exactly the kids are being drugged while
00:06:38.420 they're stuck at home in order to make things easier on the teachers and on the parents and on
00:06:42.860 the system generally that's who this is for it's hard to think of any industry that's enjoyed more
00:06:48.160 success over the past 20 years or so than big pharma more than 131 million people that's two-thirds
00:06:54.200 of all adults in the united states report that they're taking at least one prescription drug
00:06:58.540 currently that's a significant increase from the year 2000 when around half of american adults said
00:07:03.080 they were doing so the percentage of people taking five or more prescription drugs has nearly doubled
00:07:07.700 since the turn of the century spending on prescription drugs in that period has more than tripled
00:07:11.920 drugs that supposedly treat psychological issues like unhappiness or lack of self-control
00:07:16.700 have done especially well from 1991 to 2018 ssri prescriptions increased by over 3000 percent
00:07:24.120 roughly half the country either takes the potentially mind-altering drug ozempic to lose weight
00:07:29.040 or knows someone taking it now given big pharma's tremendous success you think that by now they would
00:07:36.500 have solved a lot of the health problems facing americans or at least made progress in resolving these
00:07:41.200 problems but the opposite is true average life expectancy is declining suicide rates are going up
00:07:48.080 so are the rates of obesity drug addiction cancer among young adults how is that possible how is the
00:07:55.080 pharmaceutical industry succeeding financially while failing in every other area that matters
00:08:00.360 how can they have so many people on so many medicines and yet at the same time everyone is only
00:08:06.240 getting sicker and less healthy part of the answer is that many drugs created by big pharma aren't even
00:08:12.640 intended to alleviate health problems anymore they're designed instead to cause more death and suffering
00:08:18.540 big pharma is churning out record amounts of sterilization drugs abortion drugs suicide drugs
00:08:24.880 especially in canada where the government has begun putting down the undesirables who don't even have a
00:08:29.200 terminal illness they are euthanizing human beings like stray dogs and hardly anyone is objecting to it
00:08:34.280 more than half of all abortions are now performed using drugs from pharmaceutical companies so-called
00:08:38.580 puberty blockers which can cause lifelong complications are now prescribed to children under the age of 18
00:08:43.480 more than twice as often as they were just a few years ago the rest of big pharma's catalog the drugs that
00:08:49.560 are at least allegedly beneficial to patients health have had a lot of marketing behind them other than new
00:08:56.360 zealand we are the only country that allows drug companies to market directly to consumers this means that
00:09:02.640 the pharmaceutical industry can sell not just the medication but also the illness that the medication
00:09:08.220 is supposed to cure do you have such and such symptoms then you might have this disease here's a drug that
00:09:13.700 can help diagnosis and prescription in one 30 second advertisement how convenient fortunately for big
00:09:21.940 pharma pharma the u.s government has also granted them immunity from lawsuits even when their products
00:09:27.340 injure people which they quite often do maybe the most important single reason for big pharma success
00:09:33.560 though is media coverage and in particular media coverage that the drug companies have paid for
00:09:39.940 pharmaceutical companies recently began spending more on advertising than they do on research and
00:09:45.280 development in 2020 the year of the great pandemic pfizer spent 12 billion dollars on marketing compared to
00:09:52.060 just nine billion dollars on r&d companies like ab v and johnson johnson and bear and many other
00:09:57.300 pharma companies posted similar numbers now what does all this money buy you if you turn on any cable or
00:10:04.820 network news channel you know the answer to that question it buys incessant advertisements that air during
00:10:10.620 every commercial break and although the net although the networks of course will never admit it it also buys
00:10:15.620 positive coverage after all if the networks criticize big pharma they stand to lose millions in
00:10:21.500 advertising dollars every single news report you see on tv is sponsored by big pharma now you might have
00:10:31.020 noticed that the entire national news media um kind of staying on this point here is currently freaking
00:10:36.880 out over the shortage of the drug adderall adderall is manufactured by teva pharmaceuticals although
00:10:42.460 there are competitors that make other versions of the drug all of a sudden adderall is really hard to
00:10:47.900 find and here's one recent report from abc action news on the shortage and i want you to see and watch
00:10:54.100 how they frame this issue listen a shortage of adhd medication is leaving some parents in limbo and
00:11:01.560 they're wondering if they're going to have enough pills to help their children yeah experts say shortages
00:11:05.560 of medications are not rare but the shortage of adhd medications is in a category of its own
00:11:11.180 arvanessa ariza spoke with one mother who says it's a game of roulette when it comes to her daughter's
00:11:15.440 medicine she also spoke to an expert who may have a better idea of when the problem will slow down
00:11:20.740 meet six-year-old ayana a beam of light with a love for lyrics
00:11:29.400 her mom jessica mcbride says this is her lovable daughter on a good day when she's on her adhd
00:11:39.020 medication they finally found one that works well for ayana last fall within about a week
00:11:44.240 of being on it she was finally able to memorize her sight words that she'd been working on for months
00:11:49.220 you know she was finally able her brain was able to slow down enough for her to focus
00:11:53.200 what will that six-year-old do without her stimulants this is a medical crisis after all the six-year-old
00:12:01.680 has trouble sitting still to memorize sight words when she's not drugged which makes her very similar
00:12:08.440 to almost every other six-year-old that has ever lived on the planet but this mother wants her
00:12:13.800 six-year-old to be less like a six-year-old because it's very inconvenient to have a six-year-old acting
00:12:18.460 like a six-year-old in the home and that's why she desperately needs the drug and by she i mean the
00:12:23.080 mother not the child the mother needs the child to be drugged so the child is not such a burden on her
00:12:28.920 the mother the anchor says that the shortage of adhd medication is leaving parents wondering
00:12:33.840 quote if they're going to have enough pills to help their children but of course adhd drugs for kids
00:12:38.380 are really meant to help the parents think about what a revealing line that is though for a moment
00:12:45.420 well there's two lines there the first is about the sight words by the way uh if your six-year-old
00:12:50.800 has not memorized all of her sight words in a few months that's normal that is a normal six-year-old
00:12:56.640 thing i've had three six-year-olds i know what i'm talking about being a husband father and host of
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00:13:38.600 might notice a pattern here that that as we have more and more distractions in life that's one of the
00:13:45.620 it's one of the changes from the 90s into the uh you know 2010s and into 2020 is that there are more
00:13:51.780 and more distractions okay we've got you introduce smartphones and social media people are on their screens
00:13:57.220 constantly 10 hours a day of screen time okay so as as there are more distractions in life people
00:14:03.940 become more distracted is that because we all have a mental disorder or are we just responding to our
00:14:10.920 environments in ways that are actually pretty normal it's not like some new objective adhd test was
00:14:20.360 developed that explains these numbers they're just making up criteria that mean nothing and diagnosing
00:14:24.520 every patient who walks in the door take a look at how the cdc defines adhd if you're skeptical the cdc
00:14:29.520 says that children have adhd if they do the following make careless mistakes or take unnecessary risks
00:14:35.480 daydream a lot forget forget or lose things a lot squirm or fidget and have a hard time resisting
00:14:41.520 temptation my god the epidemic is worse than i thought i mean apparently literally every child who
00:14:47.240 has ever lived on earth is infected at the risk of angering all the people who will scream from the
00:14:52.640 rooftops that correlation doesn't equal causation like it's some kind of scriptural edict here's some
00:14:58.140 data that's worth considering from 1980 to 2020 the share of male teachers in both elementary and middle
00:15:04.260 schools declined from 40 percent to less than 20 percent men have mostly stopped teaching young
00:15:11.460 children in school and during this same period as men have abandoned elementary schools there's
00:15:16.860 coincidentally been another major change in childhood education everyone's being diagnosed with adhd more
00:15:23.460 than 21 percent of 14 year old boys in this country now supposedly suffer from this condition the number
00:15:29.700 goes up to 23 percent for 17 year old boys and as a result prescriptions for drugs like ritalin and
00:15:35.320 adderall have skyrocketed from 2012 to 2022 the total number of prescription for stimulants to treat adhd
00:15:41.020 increased dramatically by nearly 60 percent and boys between the ages of 10 to 14 were the demographic
00:15:47.960 that saw the highest increase in these prescriptions now for decades you've been instructed to believe
00:15:53.020 that there's no significance to this correlation whatsoever you know as women increasingly entered
00:15:59.420 the workforce and replace men in teaching jobs we're not supposed to draw any conclusions about how the
00:16:04.900 behavior of male children is now being addressed the truth we've been told is not that a feminized
00:16:12.660 education system has increasingly punished normal male behavior that it doesn't understand it's not that
00:16:18.400 schools have lost their capacity to educate male students it's not that smartphone use and electronics
00:16:23.520 in general have become distractions which teachers have been unable to control instead we've been led to
00:16:28.420 believe that in truth boys have suddenly become afflicted with a severe and mysterious psychological
00:16:35.300 disorder there's no objective biologically based test for this disorder nor can anyone point to a specific
00:16:41.660 gene or pathogen that might cause it but the scientific consensus for many years now has nevertheless been
00:16:48.800 clear adhd they've said again and again is real and the way to treat it is to give children speed in the
00:16:55.820 form of drugs like ritalin now as i've said repeatedly all this time for well over a decade the science
00:17:03.040 behind the theory of adhd isn't simply underbaked or inadequate it is comically useless to the point
00:17:10.660 that it is obviously fraudulent the whole thing is a fraud and to give just one of many examples a few
00:17:18.120 years ago researchers at the university of central florida conducted a grand experiment where they put a child
00:17:24.180 in front of a computer and um here's what it looked like you could see it there uh the researchers
00:17:30.440 showed a child two separate videos one of the videos was about mathematics and it involved the teacher
00:17:36.900 talking about basic addition and subtraction and multiplication the other video was the pod racing
00:17:42.120 scene from star wars and as you can see from the videos the child became bored during the math lecture
00:17:48.440 he starts spinning in his chair and fidgeting uh on the other hand when the child has shown something
00:17:53.920 more engaging he suddenly stops fidgeting he's actually paying attention to star wars he was not
00:17:59.520 paying attention to the math video now unless you're an alien who's never interacted with a child and
00:18:05.440 was never a child yourself there is nothing remotely interesting or surprising about this footage
00:18:12.760 it's exactly what you would expect a normal healthy child to do but in the academic world which exists
00:18:20.160 to sell pharmaceuticals to children this was a groundbreaking experiment the footage was the
00:18:25.300 basis for a peer-reviewed article in something called the journal of abnormal child psychology
00:18:30.100 abnormal child psychology and the university of central florida bragged about their findings with this
00:18:35.980 headline adhd kids can be still if they're not straining their brains their conclusion was that
00:18:42.840 adhd is a nefarious disorder that's only triggered by cognitively demanding tasks and that we need to be
00:18:49.520 vigilant of adhd whenever children have to use their brains in specific ways