Experimental Psychologist | Part-time tour guide | DPhil from @OxExpPsy | Studying diagnostic inflation and medicalisation | I also love talking about smiles :)
Oxford, England
Joined April 2022
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Dr Sam Day retweeted
‘We band of brothers, for he today who sheds his blood with me shall be my brother...’
Happy St Crispin's Day 🏴🏴
Dr Sam Day retweeted
An oldie but a goodie. In 1968 a bunch of entitled hippy bastards sent a letter detailing their specious demands to the Warden and Fellows of Wadham College, Oxford. This was their letter of reply, which speaks to how far the academy has since fallen.
Dr Sam Day retweeted
Over half of all NHS-funded ADHD assessments and a third of autism assessments are now carried out by private providers.
Private providers are profiting from the expansion of ADHD and autism diagnosis, @utafrith @naomicfisher
bmj.com/content/395/bmj-2026…
Dr Sam Day retweeted
Here’s how TikTok convinces people they have mental illness without any prompting from the user:
psych-partners.com/how-dr-ti…
Dr Sam Day retweeted
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4155… If you haven't seen this, you may find it interesting.
I am not in the sector, so this is purely my opinion, but I think diagnostic guidelines and legislation puts significant pressure on clinicians in MH space.
Dr Sam Day retweeted
Medical practitioners admit to their profession's wrongly diagnosing normal feelings (often to adverse circumstances) as mental disorders.
For some, an ADHD diagnosis is seen as being trendy.
Survey conducted by JL Partners (June 2026). n=1,521 UK adults. n=108 mental health professionals.
telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10…
Dr Sam Day retweeted
My advocacy allies should read this. Interesting and what we already know advocating for those with SMI.
It's time to talk about mental health, medicalisation, and overdiagnosis.
When polls show that people think autism, ADHD, and anxiety are overdiagnosed, a common reply is:
"The public don't know what they're talking about. Ask an expert."
So that's exactly what I did. And it turns out experts are far more concerned than the public!
Dr Sam Day retweeted
Stages in mad rush to psych overdiagnosis:
1)DSM-III sells millions of copies making psych dx a cultural phenomenon
2)Big Pharma sells ills to peddle pills
3)Careless clinicians diagnose patients they barely know
4)Massive & usually wrong internet self-diagnosis
Useful survey:
It's time to talk about mental health, medicalisation, and overdiagnosis.
When polls show that people think autism, ADHD, and anxiety are overdiagnosed, a common reply is:
"The public don't know what they're talking about. Ask an expert."
So that's exactly what I did. And it turns out experts are far more concerned than the public!
Dr Sam Day retweeted
Sometime before 2016, a psychiatrist started asking their late-diagnosed adult patients with ADHD whether they thought they were more sensitive to rejection and failure than other people.
They said that they were. He didn’t (as far as I can tell) do any comparison with people with mental health problems, or with those with social anxiety. He didn’t look at children or those diagnosed in childhood. He just asked his patients to self-compare with others.
There were no attempts to test out whether this was specific to ADHD, nor universal in those with ADHD.
In 2016, the psychiatrist, William Dodson, gave this a name - rejection sensitivity dysphoria - and started writing about it. It resonated with influencers who created content talking about their RSD. It quickly multiplied. Articles were written about it on official sounding websites. Qualitative research was done, asking people who had heard about RSD whether they experienced it and what it was like.
By 2024, Dodson was saying that RSD was neurological and genetic, not related to trauma and wouldn’t respond to psychotherapy.
By 2026, bestselling author Alex Partridge wrote a whole book about his RSD, pinning it squarely to ADHD and saying that RSD ‘explained my entire life’. He gave a convincing sounding brain-based explanation about ‘glitches’ in how the ADHD brain processes dopamine and nor-epinephrine, and how these lead to rejection feeling far more brutal than for people without ADHD. There is no evidence of this that I have found.
And in this way a psychological and emotional reaction was framed as a neurobiological symptom. Millions started to think that perhaps they had ADHD, because they were sensitive to rejection and failure. RSD spread, and soon people started saying it was part of autism too.
Why does that matter? Because when people think something is due to how their brains work, they think that it is set in stone and won’t change. They think that medication is their only option, and that psychotherapy has nothing to offer. Emotional sensitivity is a really common psychological symptom, and it hasn’t been shown that it’s uniquely part of ADHD. RSD is an example of how neurodivergence is expanding to incorporate emotional reactions, and in the process turning psychology into neurology.
With RSD, the most basic scientific questions haven’t been answered, but you’d never know that from what you see online. There, it all seems so certain and clear.
It’s not.
Dr Sam Day retweeted
Mental health professionals are more worried about overdiagnosis than the public, new research from @SamDayOxEP shows. That's clinicians, not cranks.
They also worry about glamourisation of conditions. But almost half of the public don't feel comfortable discussing these issues!
It's time to talk about mental health, medicalisation, and overdiagnosis.
When polls show that people think autism, ADHD, and anxiety are overdiagnosed, a common reply is:
"The public don't know what they're talking about. Ask an expert."
So that's exactly what I did. And it turns out experts are far more concerned than the public!
Dr Sam Day retweeted
Also do follow @SamDayOxEP. There's more to come in the space and, uniquely, he's coming at this from a public health perspective first, rather than a welfare perspective
Dr Sam Day retweeted
If you won’t listen to a commentator, listen to a medical professional.
Timely research into a snowballing political and social problem
It's time to talk about mental health, medicalisation, and overdiagnosis.
When polls show that people think autism, ADHD, and anxiety are overdiagnosed, a common reply is:
"The public don't know what they're talking about. Ask an expert."
So that's exactly what I did. And it turns out experts are far more concerned than the public!
It's time to talk about mental health, medicalisation, and overdiagnosis.
When polls show that people think autism, ADHD, and anxiety are overdiagnosed, a common reply is:
"The public don't know what they're talking about. Ask an expert."
So that's exactly what I did. And it turns out experts are far more concerned than the public!
To end on a positive note. 85% of mental health professionals feel comfortable publicly discussing over-medicalisation. Among the general public, only 54% said the same.
The professionals are not a silenced minority who feel unable to speak up. They are very willing to talk. We should start listening!
Survey conducted by JL Partners (June 2026). n=1,521 UK adults. n=108 mental health professionals.
telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10…