Horizon

Life isn't fair and I think politics has a duty to reflect that.

Rory Bremner is Britain's best-known political impressionist.

I wouldn't do that if I were you.

But there's a side to Rory that the public doesn't see.

For as long as I can remember, I've had a really active brain.

The trouble is... Sorry.

BLEEP! BLEEP!

Back again, back again. Once more, let's go. BLEEP!

Come on.

For as long as I can remember, I've had a really active...

BLEEP! Distracted all the time.

Constant distractions.

OK.

For as long as I can remember...

For as long as I can remember, I've had a really active brain,

but that's a good thing. The trouble is...

HE GROANS BLEEP!

Stop trying to get it right. Come on.

Come on!

For as long as I can remember... BLEEP!

Rory has suspected for some time that he may have ADHD -

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Because I get distracted, I think about too many things,

I get overwhelmed.

So, he's on a mission to find out more about ADHD.

What causes it?

Genes are not everything that there is -

there's also the environment.

And why does it exist at all?

People with ADHD would have been more the pathfinders.

ADHD can shatter lives and families...

...and push some into a world of crime.

After years of uncertainty,

Rory will find out whether or not he has the condition himself.

And he'll try a unique experiment for Horizon.

Wish me luck.

Ladies and gentlemen,

please put your hands together for Rory Bremner.

Thank you.

Thank you very much indeed.

For as long as I can remember, I've had a really active brain.

The problem is, when it gets too active,

it jumps around all over the place, gets distracted

by a million and one things, when I'm supposed to be concentrating.

I used to think that was just what it was like to be me,

but recently I've come to suspect

that it's what it's like to have ADHD.

So what does it feel like?

It's like having a brain like a pinball machine.

See, a normal person might look that

and see a whole load of different breads, but I'm just drawn to the labels.

They say "spelt loaf" and I think, why's it spelt like that?

It's like seeing a whole row of doors

and you want to go through each door

and each one leads to another door.

Knock knock. Who's there? Focaccia.

Focaccia who? Focaccia doing that again, you're in deep trouble.

In the meantime...

...another thought pops into your head.

This is a chorus line, isn't it?

Just pulling your leg, sorry!

As a comedian, I kind of welcome that, because you want that freedom,

you want to be...

It's all the associations. It jumps, it's a leap of the imagination,

it's breaking the rules, if you like,

and breaking the rules is really good fun.

Until it's not.

ADHD is, of course, primarily a problem

for both Rory and his family.

ADHD can make you hate yourself.

I'm sure I'm very hard to live with...

...because I will drift off when I'm supposed to be...

...paying attention.

I'll forget things that I've been asked to do.

In the middle of a meeting,

I'll just go out and start swinging a golf club

or walking around the garden

when I'm supposed to be taking part in a...

...a meeting with a builder or a plumber or something because I'm just bored.

It's almost like there's a little devil inside you that goes,

"Ha-ha-ha, let's see how we can cock this up."

It's as an adult that Rory's come to suspect he has ADHD.

But typically, symptoms are strongest

and most visible in children.

Now can you see my face?

Jayden is five years old.

He's an extreme case and was diagnosed with ADHD aged just three.

All day and every day, Jayden shows the core symptoms of ADHD.

Inattentiveness...

This is boring.

...impulsive behaviour...

Liar!

...and hyperactivity.

Not everyone with ADHD shows all these symptoms.

But Jayden does.

His mum, Emily, has tried all the parenting techniques...

No. Let me go!

...including the naughty step.

All have failed.

So, she's had to take drastic measures.

So, we have to...

We have a door alarm on Jayden's door for his own safety

so that we know where he is at all times.

If we didn't have this, he gets up in the middle of the night or in the

early hours of the morning and will just do whatever he wants.

He has been known to leave the house.

So, that when he opens the door...

Straight away.

So that's quite fun.

So this is Jayden's bedroom.

We've lived here six months and he's already put a hole in the wall.

He did that about three weeks after we moved in.

He lost his temper.

He's scribbled all over the walls.

There's a hole in the floor.

We had to put a lock on the window the night that we moved in.

I woke up at three o'clock in the morning with this feeling,

came running in here to see what he was doing

and he'd tied his bedsheet

to the window arch and was trying to abseil down the side of the house

to get outside. He thinks that he can do anything.

He's invincible.

It's scary for us, really,

because he's constantly doing things like that,

the whole time.

This is my daughter Skylar's bedroom.

We had to put a combination lock on her bedroom door to stop Jayden

getting in.

It's like living in a prison.

It's normally much more tidy than this, but...

The damage on the wall. So whenever he can get in, if he gets a chance,

he will get in and break her things.

When he was about three or four, he would do things like urinate on her

clothes just to get back at her.

When he's angry, he doesn't care about other people.

And as his behaviour's become more extreme, she's become very quiet,

very reserved - depressed, I would say.

She's depressed. I think it's really hard for her.

At school, Jayden is also kept under lock and key.

You're not allowed outside.

Because they're mean!

Mean teachers.

He isn't allowed out to play because they feared that he'd run off.

He's physically sort of locked into that room.

He has to have two people escort him to the toilet at all times.

Like, he cannot be left alone.

The impact on the whole family is profound.

I never get a break.

Me and my husband never, ever spend time together.

If we do, it's for very short periods of time.

Parents of children with ADHD

are three times more likely to divorce or separate.

Yes!

I feel trapped all the time.

There are days when I will just sit at the end of the day and cry...

and then you can go to sleep and it's a fresh start the next day.

I think I just live with the fact that it can't get much worse.

The number of people living with ADHD is surprisingly high.

An estimated 5% of children and 3% of adults in the UK.

Before Rory finds out if he has ADHD,

he wants to know why people with ADHD behave the way they do.

So, he's come to King's College in South London

to see if looking at their brains can provide any answers.

Hi there. Hi, Rory, very nice to meet you. Good to see you.

Professor Katya Rubia has spent much of her working life

studying the ADHD brain.

So, what I'm really keen to find out is, is an ADHD brain different?

Yeah. How is it different? Yeah, it is, in fact, very different,

both in the structure of the brain and the function of the brain.

So... you could say the hardware of the brain

and the software of the brain,

both is underdeveloped.

OK. So, what are we looking at here?

These are slices through the brain.

Are we looking at the top down, as if the camera's here?

Yes, this would be the top and then you go down.

So this is around the eye level and this is the lower part.

Oh, I see. They are horizontal cuts through the brain.

It's an MRI image.

It's like brain carpaccio. This is based...

Yes, exactly.

What jumps out are the yellow areas.

What are we looking at there?

So the yellow areas are areas which are smaller in ADHD

compared to healthy controls.

And the areas we found are most consistently smaller

in structure are these frontal lobe regions,

which is in the frontal part of the brain, and the basal ganglia,

deep in the brain. The frontal lobe and the basal ganglia are connected.

OK, so what do those parts of the brain actually do?

These parts of the brain, they mediate many functions

which are very important for mature adult behaviour.

For example, the ability to self-restrain yourself,

to inhibit yourself.

And ADHD patients, they have problems with self-control.

Impulsive. Impulsive, yeah, exactly.

They're impulsive. They also mediate attention,

they also have problems with timing behaviour.

For example, you know, if you are impulsive,

you do things prematurely, too early in time,