The rise in ADHD diagnoses looks suspicious to some people. Too many, too fast, too easy. But what actually happened is that the conversation got loud enough for the people who were always missed to finally recognise themselves in it. That's not the system being gamed. That's the system slowly starting to work.

They tell you the diagnosis will feel like a light turning on. And parts of it do. But nobody warns you about what comes after the oh — the grief for the student who might have done better, the teenager who might have been kinder to herself, the years spent being told you just needed to try harder. This is the side of late diagnosis nobody writes about.