Channel 4 introduced the phenomenon this week in a Cutting Edge documentary that followed two children who supposedly have Indigo gifts.

Oliver, 8, has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but his mother worries that his condition has been misdiagnosed. Is he, in fact, distracted by the spirits that he professes to see? About Heather, 15, there is no question mark. Both she and her mother are convinced that she is a paranormal prodigy, the Jean Gray of Rochester. The programme was called My Child’s Psychic. It invited an obvious retort: no he’s not.

Cutting Edge, however, failed to make it. The documentary was remarkable for its credulity and lack of sceptical content. Parents and professional psychics were allowed to put leading questions to children without challenge. No medical professional was interviewed. Perhaps the goal was to give the Indigo movement the rope to hang itself. But the absence of any rational perspective was alarming.

The idea that a difficult child’s behavioural problems might be the result of hidden talents is going to be attractive to some parents. That is especially true when the alternative offered by doctors is a diagnosis of ADHD. As Oliver’s mother puts it: “I’m not keen on the label.”

She worries, like many parents, about putting him on stimulant drugs such as Ritalin, the primary form of treatment. This is not surprising, given the bad press that ADHD has received in Britain. It is variously seen as an American-inspired fad, an excuse for bad parenting, a quick and easy diagnosis for overburdened doctors, or as “disease-mongering” by pharmaceutical companies to sell more drugs.

None of these charges is without foundation, but they also tend to be exaggerated. ADHD is clearly a genuine condition that responds to treatment. Particularly in its most severe form, hyperkinetic disorder, it is as different from normal naughtiness as is clinical depression from feeling a little down. If it is sometimes over-diagnosed at the mild end of the spectrum, research suggests that hyperkinetic disorder is under-recognised.

Ritalin and similar drugs do not work for every child, but they greatly assist the social and educational development of many others. This sort of medication is unfairly demonised as a “chemical cosh”; its effect is not to sedate children into obedience but to restore a normal balance of emotions. With therapy, they start to concentrate and learn, picking up the behavioural skills that will eventually allow them to live without it. Untreated, they are at high risk of low educational achievement, delinquency and mental illness later in life.

Proper identification and treatment of ADHD can transform lives. This may not even always require drugs: there is encouraging preliminary evidence that diet, particularly omega-3 fatty acids, can help to control it. Children will not profit, however, if their parents insist that they are “Indigos” with whom nothing is wrong.

Belief in the supernatural is often held to be harmless fun, even of benefit through the placebo effect that “spiritual healing” might sometimes confer. When it interferes with the diagnosis and therapy of disorders that medicine can help, it is no such thing. It is unfortunate when adults believe in nonsense, but it’s ultimately up to them. It is something else to foist it on children who have genuine and treatable problems.

Mark Henderson is Science Editor of The Times

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