“Connor was born screaming and didn’t stop until he was 16 and joined the army,” explained his mum (all names in this article have been changed). Connor’s story used to be familiar: a physically active boy who hated school but flourished when he joined the Army. Connor’s successful military career is thanks in part to the fact that his boisterous nature was not medicalised – something that could have limited his chances of passing the Army’s medical examination.
Psychiatric reasons are now the biggest reason for rejection from Army recruitment. Over 7,000 British Army applicants were rejected last year on mental health grounds. Connor’s story should be the rule but, thanks to the current culture of over-diagnosis, may now be the exception.
Connor’s mum explains his journey from classic ‘difficult child’ to flourishing Army Private:
Connor hated being a child, he found it so frustrating. When he was two, we tried to attend a toddler play group but he’d just want to hit the other babies with the toys. I remember crying when the play leader suggested I “had him tested”. The same thing happened at school: all the teachers were very keen to medicalise him with some condition. I knew there was nothing wrong with him, Connor just preferred being outside to inside. I spent hours a day taking him on walks, he’d always be chucking himself across streams, climbing trees, clambering over walls.
Connor failed all his GCSEs, successfully applied to the Army and loved it. With Army catch-up education, he resat and passed his Maths and English GCSE. He also learned to drive with the Army and passed first time. Now 6’4’’, Connor, 19, is a credit to himself, his family and his country. His mum said: “I’m so grateful to the Army, it supported his love of exercise, of being outside, of using his physical energy to positive good.”
A pity then that the current over-diagnosis culture is preventing a significant number of young people with similar behaviours to Conno, from successfully joining the Army.
Boys like Adam. Adam was diagnosed with ADHD in primary school. “I hated school, I hated the teachers. I hated the headteacher. I just wanted to be outside playing football and doing karate.”
Instead, he was prescribed methylphenidate and got into playing video games. “I wasn’t able to concentrate at school but then I’d go home and game into the early hours of the morning. I became very socially withdrawn so I was then diagnosed with autism.”
He didn’t do well academically and decided he wanted to join the army. He was unfit but put himself on a training programme and improved dramatically. He passed the physical exam but not the mental health assessment. Adam has been advised to come off the medication for a year and consider reapplying. “I’m pissed off. I should have been fitter when I was younger. My ADHD and autism were used as an excuse to allow poor behaviour and habits that did me no favours.” Now 18, Adam is a NEET (not in work or education), claiming Personal Independence Payments (PIP) for his neurodevelopmental conditions.
The different outcomes for two similar boys should give anyone interested in army recruitment pause. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence states: “Neurodevelopment disorders or mental health conditions are not a basis for military rejection. Every application is considered on a case-by-case basis by specialist clinicians, who assess the severity of any health condition and the need for future treatment.”
But the figures tell a different story. Since 2020, psychiatric rather than physical reasons became the number one barrier to entry to Army recruitment. The latest figures for 2024 showed 54% of Army applicants were rejected on mental health grounds: 7,379 for psychiatric reasons compared with 1,559 for musculoskeletal, 781 respiratory and 745 dermatological problems.
Programme Cortisone digitally connects medical records, including online pharmacy ordering, with military recruiters. If ADHD or anti-anxiety meds administered for GCSE exam stress appear on the timeline, they will be automatically scanned and flagged requiring investigation. While a single episode of depression or a diagnosis of ADHD or autism does not mean an automatic failure, it is used as part of the wider application considerations. The MOD tells me that military applicants with a history of ADHD for instance also have to demonstrate: “No evidence of past psychiatric co-morbidities, including substance abuse, no use of medication for the preceding 12 months without adverse impact on function, and evidence of function compatible with military employment for at least 12 months.”
Of course this seems extremely wise. It is in no-one’s interest to recruit mentally or physically unfit young people to the British Army. As the MOD explains: “Service in the Armed Forces is physically and mentally demanding and we owe it to our personnel and our nation to ensure that those hoping to join are able to meet those demands. This requires rigorous standards of medical fitness from the outset.”
However, if it’s the case that a significant proportion of those diagnosed with mental health conditions have actually been over-diagnosed, things suddenly look a bit different. I work with many boys and young men who would flourish with the vigorous discipline, team work, boundaries and physical fitness that military service offers. I know that because they have been sent down the medialised mental health route, this route is now closed to them.
Diagnoses for ADHD, autism, autism spectrum disorder and anxiety in young people have all increased rapidly over the past five years, with the NHS currently suggesting that 741,000 young people have ADHD. One in five children are now said to have a special educational needs condition. Given that private health operators earn between £1,000 and £3,000 for autism or ADHD diagnoses, scepticism around the financial rather than medical motivations for over-diagnosis is growing. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary has raised concerns about “over-diagnosis” and “over-labelling” of mental health conditions, suggesting that too many people are being “written-off”. A Government review led by Professor Peter Fonagy into autism and ADHD diagnosis and treatment is due to report this summer.
Adrian is one such Army applicant who contests the reasons for his mental health rejection. Adrian had a tough lockdown. He missed his friends and tried to compensate for the lack of in-person socialising by being on his phone until the early hours of the morning. He got into a funk and his mum took him to a private child psychiatrist. Depression was diagnosed and he was put on a low dose of sertraline, which he came off when the schools opened again. Now at university Adrian joined the Officer Training Corps and loved the exercise and camaraderie. The OTC however, did not like his “history of depression”. Adrian failed his medical and was asked to leave. Adrian explains: “My mum thought she was doing the right thing in getting me seen by a specialist. Looking back on things, I don’t think there was anything wrong with me, beyond not seeing my mates. I was lonely, not depressed.”
What Adrian’s experience and others like him reveal is a more pernicious aspect of the mental health culture which is difficult to untangle. Sometimes, diagnoses become an intrinsic part of people’s identity, and therefore a self-fulfilling prophecy. Adrian is gutted. “I thought in addressing my low mood and continuing to talk about my mental health I was doing the right thing.” He will reapply to the Army after university.
None of the boys interviewed for this article wanted their names included. They were all embarrassed of their childhood behaviour. “There was nothing wrong with me,” said Adam, “I was just a child, annoying maybe, but not mentally ill!”
In medicalising normal childhood behaviour, society is in danger of preventing young boys from becoming the sorts of men the Army, and the country, needs.
Mary Gilleece is an education support worker and her name is a pseudonym.
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A friend’s grandson aged 5, precocious mathematical ability but teacher concerned that he can’t sit still…. wants to refer him to someone. He’s a 5 year old boy!! In many countries he wouldn’t even have started school. This craziness has to stop. I blame over feminisation of primary schools, extreme safetyism and the relentless pressure of school league tables.
It’s as if they don’t really want an army
There are many who believe childhood vaccinations injure children’s brains and cause adhd and autism. Look at the Amish for an example of children unvaccinated. No adhd, no autism. Why is autism now 1:31 in 2026? Heartbreaking.
About 45 years ago I gave a hitch-hiking marine a lift from his base at Lympstone to London. He had a very limited vocabulary and liked talking about his favourite training which involved crawling under and over things and then killing people. By the time we were nearing London I was hoping that I hadn’t annoyed him in any way. I suppose the best sort of recruitment for the army and Marines is from chaps like this who are mentally limited and inclined to enjoy action and are not too philosophical about the other side.
Being mentally limited is definitely the exception with the Booties, they are very often articulate and intelligent soldiers. And can still let slip the dogs of war when the situation calls for it. Same with our maroon-bereted chums – it’s a life which attracts a huge variety of types.
You see, had you watched The Hitcher, which hadn’t quite been released then, you’d likely never have picked that strange guy up.😨
Group Captain Lizzy Nichol fell foul of the perversity that is muddled selection criteria (DEI) when, as head of recruitment for the RAF, she refused to hit targets, (later proved to be unlawful) for aircrew selection, favouring female and ethnic minority candidates over white men. A woman of principle and common sense, she resigned. (So did I, 40 years ago, though from a less exalted rank).
I didn’t know this about Churchill but it sort of pertains to the article and my above post. I don’t think depression ( or mental health diagnoses in general ) in and of itself should be enough to disqualify someone from joining the army. Many forms of depression are transient and a natural result of specific life circumstances ( such as with feeling socially isolated during lockdown, as above, getting divorced or the death of a loved one ). Not all people experience suicidal ideation and I think the army would be quite the tonic and a good fit for many young lads who have struggled at school. Surely to god your depression is going to get 100X worse if you leave school with no qualifications, no prospects and no opportunities on the horizon. Something like the army would be a godsend to many, I expect;
”Winston Churchill fought his depression with bricks. He’d lay them for hours at his country home in Kent. He joined the bricklayers’ union. And in 1921 he wrote about why it worked. It took psychology another 75 years to catch up. He called his depression the “Black Dog.” It followed him for decades. His… Read more »
I didn’t know that about Churchill, thanks.
I find woodworking is a wonderful antidote to stress.
Good for you, Ma’am.
Over here in the Netherlands they have Praktijkscholen ( practical schools ). These are for kids that find regular education too demanding and are not academically inclined, or have been kicked out of other schools due to challenging behaviour for whatever reason ( it’s ‘three strikes and you’re out’ regarding high schools expelling kids here ). So it’s basically offering them hands-on learning through acquiring practical skills and gaining experience ( e.g woodwork, technology, social/animal care, logistics etc ) so that they can walk into a job when they’re done. They also learn life skills such as cooking and money management when they’re there and classes are much smaller than regular Dutch schools.
I don’t think such specific schools exist in the UK, do they? At least with this option kids have prospects and aren’t doomed to be added to the ‘NEET’ stats when they’re finished with high school, which is just going to compound any existing mental health or behavioural issues if you’re not able to participate fully in the workforce or become financially independent;
”Practical education is a form of secondary education for pupils between 12 and 19 years old for whom regular theoretical secondary education is not… Read more »
We used to have the same – trade schools and proper apprenticeships which generally led to a paid position upon completion. It’s why YouTube channels of people starting long-dead engines and things like that have such huge audiences, and also why there is hardly anybody around who can wield a spanner anymore.
Which has driven wages skyward for those of us who can, so every cloud and all that…
The whole “mental health” thing is basically medieval level medicine. It is almost entirely subjective, speculative and based not on physiology but on a set of symptoms classified under the name of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM. These are not scientifically validated conditions but rather ones agreed to by committee. The current manual of conditions and symptoms is DSM-5, i.e. version 5.
This sentence from the article reveals how full of shit the whole thing is:
Sometimes, diagnoses become an intrinsic part of people’s identity, and therefore a self-fulfilling prophecy
You know what doesn’t become an self fulfilling profecy and part of people’s identity? Things like liver failure, heart attacks, cancer. Physically observable and testable conditions that you can’t fake and can’t fool yourself and others into thinking have appeared.
There are generally no objective, physical tests for mental health conditions because as far as I can see, we don’t really know how the brain works. We have some notions, but nothing like enough to really know what is going on.
So the whole thing is a load of quackery which of course is fertile ground for bullshitters and people who in some way… Read more »
What a great, horrible article.
All these poor youngsters.
No one really thought about the second and third order effects of all this ridiculous over medicalisation.
I think many did think about it. Just not the right people.
Basically it seems they are trying medicalise being a boy.
Tragic.
One of so many tragedies being enacted by the current regime.
being a boy and being sad. Of course if you are locked up for no reason you would be sad or being told you have toxic whiteness. Medicalising tyranny. What times we live in.
Quite how that is going to work with engineers and technicians will be interesting to watch. I would say that many of us would have “registered on the scale” somewhere – we were obsessive about all things mechanical and electrical, and most of the engineers I now work with in civvy st. are the same – it is part of the territory which comes with interest (or obsession) in such things.
Pffffft! I am an engineering technician and these’s nothing autistic about me!
Anyway, I can’t sit around posting pish on here all day, I’m busy trying to use a solenoid driver to activate a strobe beacon controlled by the audio output of a SCADA PC.