Is “ADHD Identity” Harmful – or Are We Aiming at the Wrong Target?

If you spend any time around critical psychiatry, you’ll know the script:

“ADHD as an identity is harmful. It locks people into a sick role, it feeds social media trends, and it turns ordinary struggle into pathology.”

It’s a serious concern. And there are real risks in over-identifying with any diagnosis.

But a new study on adolescents with ADHD complicates that story in useful ways – and, I’d argue, speaks directly to the late-diagnosed adults who are now being accused of treating ADHD as a “trend” rather than a real condition.

The short version:

• ADHD identity can be protective or harmful, depending on how it’s integrated.
• What does the damage is not “having an ADHD identity” – it’s being engulfed by it.
• And there’s growing evidence that a well-integrated, neurodiversity-informed identity is linked to better self-management, social participation, and quality of life, not worse.

Let’s unpack that without slipping into cheerleading or denial.

What the new study actually found

Stern & Lamash used the Illness Identity Questionnaire with 154 adolescents who had a formal ADHD diagnosis. They looked at four ways a diagnosis can sit inside someone’s identity:

• Rejection – “This isn’t really part of me; I don’t want to think or talk about it.”
• Engulfment – “This is me; ADHD explains everything and colours my whole life.”
• Acceptance – “This is real and part of me, but not the whole of me.”
• Enrichment – “Living with this has given me insight, skills or strengths.”

Key findings:

1. Acceptance was the strongest overall identity dimension. On average, teens were more likely to say “I accept that I’m a person with ADHD” than to reject or feel completely defined by it.
2. Engulfment and rejection were lower. Most adolescents did not report being fully consumed by the diagnosis or totally denying it.
3. More severe ADHD symptoms – especially inattention – were linked to higher engulfment. The more day-to-day impairment, the more likely teens were to feel overtaken by ADHD.
4. Engulfment predicted lower quality of life more strongly than symptom severity itself. How much the diagnosis swallowed their identity mattered more for wellbeing than how “severe” the symptoms were on paper.
5. A more positive identity (high acceptance/enrichment, low rejection/engulfment) was linked to better quality of life – especially socially. Social quality of life also predicted a healthier diagnostic identity over time.

So the study doesn’t show that “ADHD identity is harmful.”

It shows that a particular form of ADHD identity – engulfment – is harmful, while acceptance and enrichment track with better outcomes.

That isn’t a small distinction. It’s the whole argument.

How this sits with critical psychiatry’s worries

People in critical psychiatry are not imagining the risks. They’re pointing to real phenomena:

• Diagnosis being used to explain everything (“that’s just my ADHD”).
• People getting stuck in a passive, helpless stance.
• Social media turning ADHD into an aesthetic and identity badge.

Those critiques overlap very closely with what the engulfment dimension captures: a life where the diagnosis becomes the central organising feature of selfhood. And the data here fully supports the concern that this pattern is linked to poorer quality of life.

Where the evidence does not support the more sweeping claim is in the leap from:

“Some people over-identify with ADHD in harmful ways”

to

“ADHD as an identity is inherently harmful.”

Multiple recent studies using similar identity frameworks report that:

• Acceptance and enrichment of an ADHD diagnosis are associated with better self-management and self-reinforcement in adolescents.
• More positive ADHD identity perceptions are linked with greater social participation and higher quality of life, whereas negative identity patterns track with lower participation and QoL.
• Qualitative work also finds that adolescents tend to experience ADHD as a mixed narrative – both vulnerability and strengths – and that symptoms and stigma are often more damaging than the label itself.

So the main empirical pattern emerging is:

The way you carry the diagnosis – not the mere fact you identify with it – is what moves outcomes.

That’s a much more nuanced message than “stop identifying with ADHD.”

“But this is about teenagers, not late-diagnosed adults…”

True, the Stern & Lamash study is adolescent-focused, cross-sectional, and deliberately excludes comorbidities – so it’s not a direct stand-in for late-diagnosed adults.

But other recent work does start to bridge that gap.

A 2025 qualitative study of adults diagnosed with ADHD in psychiatric outpatient settings found repeated themes of:

• Relief and validation (“finally, an explanation”)
• Identity disruption (“who was I before this label?”)
• Wrestling with stigma and authenticity (“is this really me, or a medical story being placed on me?”)

Age of diagnosis matters: those diagnosed later often come in with decades of unexplained failure, shame, or “character flaws.” An ADHD diagnosis doesn’t create that story – it reframes it.

Another recent paper on ADHD identity across age, race and socioeconomic status found that identity integration is harder when internalised stigma is high, and that rejection of the diagnosis is also associated with lower life satisfaction and self-efficacy. Texas Woman’s University

If we (cautiously) extrapolate:

• Late-diagnosed adults may be especially likely to use the diagnosis as a narrative organising tool. That’s not trendiness, that’s repair work.
• For many, “I have ADHD” functions as a framework to reinterpret a lifetime of struggle, rather than as a fresh source of victimhood.
• The risk of engulfment is real – especially right after diagnosis – but the evidence suggests that moving toward acceptance and enrichment reduces harm rather than amplifying it.

That sits quite comfortably with a neurodiversity-oriented view: brains differ, and a name for that difference can be either a cage or a map, depending on how it’s held.

Is ADHD identity just a social media trend?

There is emerging research on “diagnosis by TikTok” and validation-seeking online, and some of it does show ambivalence:

• A 2025 study found that people who self-diagnose ADHD online tend to seek more social and media validation and report higher internalised stigma and more negative self-image, although validation also brought some positives.

That pattern looks far more like a group of people using whatever language they can find to explain real distress than a bunch of bored teenagers playing with a fashionable label.

And even there, the problem again seems to be:

• Unstable, externally driven identity (built on fragile validation loops), not the mere presence of an ADHD identity.

It’s also worth noting that the neurodiversity movement is not a TikTok invention. Long before Reels and Shorts, neurodivergent communities were building identity-based frameworks as a way to fight stigma and demand structural change. There is now evidence that endorsing neurodiversity-affirming attitudes is associated with lower stigma toward neurodivergent traits and more positive views of difference.

So yes, there are messy, commodified, aesthetic versions of “ADHD identity” online.

But that doesn’t erase the deeper shift: many people are finally being given language to name something that has shaped their entire life.

When identity heals and when it hurts

Pulling the threads together:

Identity is most harmful when:

• ADHD becomes the master explanation for every misstep, emotion or conflict (engulfment).
• The label is used to opt out of responsibility rather than to renegotiate how responsibility is met.
• The person is stuck in environments that remain punishing and invalidating, so the diagnosis only confirms their “brokenness.”

Identity is most helpful when:

• The diagnosis is accepted but decentered – one important thread in a larger story.
• It creates a shared language to ask for accommodations, redesign work, and build realistic scaffolding.
• It enables a shift from moral judgment (“I’m lazy / selfish / weak”) to specific, tractable executive-function problems.
• It’s nested in a broader, neurodiversity-aligned understanding of human variation, rather than a simple defect story.

The adolescent data support this:

• Engulfment → lower quality of life.
• Acceptance / enrichment → better social functioning and self-management.

So the question isn’t, “Should people stop identifying with ADHD?”

The more useful question is, “What kind of ADHD identity are they developing – and in what environment?”

My stance: label as framework, not fate

From this evidence base, treating “ADHD” as a framework makes more sense than treating it as either a trend or a life sentence.

Used well, the label:

• anchors a complex cluster of traits, struggles and strengths;
• opens doors to treatment, accommodations and community;
• and supports a more accurate, less moralised self-story.

Used badly, it can shrink a person’s sense of possibility, excuse harmful behaviour, or become the only thing they know how to talk about.

Critical psychiatry is right to worry about engulfment and medicalisation. The current data actually back that concern – but they also show that outright rejection of ADHD identity isn’t the solution.

Instead, the task is to support people (including late-diagnosed adults) to move through the initial intensity of “this explains everything” and into a more balanced, integrated story.