I looked back over my old school report cards recently and there is a common refrain.

“Great potential, if only he applied himself.”

“He’s clearly intelligent, but he just can’t seem to …”

My neuro-spicy brain wonders how many Bermudians my age, now in our forties, look at our children’s report cards and remember those same phrases being written about us.

At the time, I believed something was wrong with me. That I just wasn’t good at school. It never sat quite right with me though, because in certain subjects, with certain teachers, I was a sponge. I excelled.

What I have now come to understand, after an assessment, a diagnosis and coaching, is that my brain is not broken. It is just wired differently. I was diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) as an adult, which is why I am choosing to write this piece. That it is ADHD Awareness Month is pure coincidence.

Over the summer, the UK saw a flurry of debate and energy arguing about whether ADHD is even real. A Channel 4 documentary that aired in August featured a former president of the Royal College of General Practitioners saying that it was not a medical condition.

The documentary concluded it was a social construct. Months earlier, more than 30 UK specialists had reached a very different conclusion: there is no good evidence of over-diagnosis and the failure is that services cannot support the people who need help.

I think they are arguing about the wrong thing. The question is not whether ADHD is real or not. It is what happens to the people who have it and what real solutions look like.

I watched this back and forth from Italy over the summer, contemplating what the neurodivergent landscape looks like in Bermuda.

Back in April, Crystal Caesar, then the education minister, spoke about autism acceptance and celebrating differences. That is the right language. Celebrating neurodiversity, as opposed to pathologising it, is genuinely positive.

But consider what is still missing: ADHD. Adults. The generation who received report-card lines about potential, lack of application and not trying hard enough but never had an explanation for why that potential and the results did not always match. The only conclusion left to them was that they were not “normal”, broken, damaged or not good enough.

I have come to believe that acceptance and recognition are two different things. Awareness alone does not get anyone assessed.

So, what actually is ADHD?

Like many of us, I pictured a fidgety child with more energy than their small body could contain, who, without the “right outlet”, simply could not and would not focus. The problem with that framing is that it puts the onus on the child. It treats something rooted in how the brain develops as a matter of behaviour, of not applying enough effort.

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition: it affects how the brain regulates attention, impulsivity, and the “executive functioning" skills around planning, organising, managing time and regulating emotions. Despite the name, it is less a shortage of attention and more to do with difficulty controlling it. Something that grips your attention and can induce a hyperfocus that has advantages and drawbacks. ADHD shows up in three broad forms, mainly inattentive, mainly hyperactive-impulsive, or combined, and the UK specialists put it at roughly one child in 20.

Laura Thomas, director clinical psychologist at Solstice, a private mental health provider that carries out assessments, puts the label in its place: “A diagnosis provides a shorthand description for a clinical presentation. However, it is important to note that two people with the same diagnosis may not present in the same way and may not require the same intervention.”

The label, in other words, is not the point. Which raises the bigger question: what counts as “normal”? Too often, being neurotypical is talked about as if we agree on what that means. What happens when the systems that are built around school, work and family life are designed around one way of processing information, holding attention, organising tasks and dealing with the world?

The cost of going through school, work and parenthood believing that you are simply not trying hard enough is difficult to quantify. That underlying negative belief is fundamentally false. You can work incredibly hard and still struggle to produce the same result someone else expects from you.

Belinda Henderson, a Bermudian research psychologist at the University of Cambridge who also works with Solstice, puts it plainly: “The greater danger is not that too many people will discover they are neurodivergent. It is that too many will spend years believing they are simply failing to be like everyone else.”

A large part of my journey through coaching following my diagnosis was a potent cocktail of relief and grief. Relief at feeling “seen” and being told that I wasn’t simply “not good enough” but at the same time a sense of loss for the life I could have had, had I known sooner.

So, let’s start here. ADHD is real. Then ask the harder questions. In Bermuda, who can actually get an assessment and a diagnosis? Is access to assessment equal? What does recognition cost and what does it cost to go without it?

If we are willing to accept that different brains work differently, recognition is not about putting a label on someone. It is about understanding what that person needs to learn, to work, to parent and to live a fulfilled life.

That’s where I am heading in my next piece on the subject. Who gets recognised? Who does not? And what is the price for never finding out?

• Paolo Odoli is a former aide-de-camp to two governors of Bermuda and a former government communications officer. He is living in northern Italy with his family