Peter Lindsay is a GP with 44 years’ experience and finds everyone he encounters is amazing!
Marching to the beat of a different drummer
Sixty years ago we spoke of ‘minimal brain dysfunction with non-motor problems’ 1 and the more we thought about it the more common it seemed to be. We then moved on to describing ‘neurodiversity’ 2 and placed labels on behaviour patterns. More recently we have recognised that there can be considerable overlap of those patterns.3 We now have a lay press that uses terms without definition, for example, ‘high functioning’ and ‘on the spectrum’. Clinically, we have the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, which defines the features of labelled problems with little description of the overlapping conditions or the people who present to GP surgeries, out of hours, and accident and emergency. Personalities talk about their abilities being ‘different not less’ and describe their successful lives.4 Neurophysiology and functional magnetic resonance imaging explain which part of the cortex, medulla, and other parts of the brain are ‘different’. As GPs, we are left helping each person by listening, enquiring, showing empathy, and offering support for each individual problem suggesting possible managements that can be of benefit — usually psychological. We also encounter those with autism, affected by ‘a form of cognitive difference that is also a disability — and how disabling it is depends as much on your social circumstances as it does on your symptoms’.5 Those social circumstances are defined by society, which has become more and more complex and more and more dependent on that complexity.
“Harris ‘tells it how it is’ and helps us to care for other people and families faced with similar problems.”
John Harris’s book helps us all. Yes, it benchmarks current knowledge on neurodiversity but, much more importantly, with the clarity of an experienced newspaper and music magazine columnist, Harris, a family man and father of a son labelled as having autism, describes how his family live together. Harris ‘tells it how it is’ and helps us to care for other people and families faced with similar problems.
He describes the reality of caring for his son, disabled by his ‘cognitive difference’. He describes the initial parental concerns and the effect they have on the emotional and physical wellbeing of the parents — ‘I go down two holes on my belt’ — and how their perception of their son changes. He describes the difficulties with management and obtaining support — ‘it feels like the best way to protect ourselves is to assume that most of the people we are dealing with will refuse to give our son what he needs’. With Harris we look to the future — ‘I see little prospect of my fears about his future going away’.
Harris clearly, carefully, and realistically describes his son growing from birth to adolescence. He describes the anxieties of parents as they see their children grow and develop, and that development does not appear to be normal. He describes so clearly the mixed emotions of parents having to describe to others not what their child can do well but what he cannot do — ‘it really hurts’.
He interweaves those emotions and anxieties with the other emotional changes that occur after the birth of a child, and the next child, and all the financial, occupational, marital, and interpersonal changes that go with life changes, such as the first day at school, the newborn sibling, and birthday parties. As the family grows and moves house they try to avoid ‘the trauma and disorientation that hit him last time we moved’. Harris advocates for the benefits of applied behaviour analysis — done correctly! — and describes coping with the current costs of it while also describing the controversy surrounding it.
“It describes the amazing gifts people affected by neurodiversity can use for everyone’s benefit if the opportunity to develop those gifts is not taken away from them.”
He appeals to us, the clinicians and clinical teams who are the points of first contact when parents have concerns about the behaviour of their children. He has messages too for others in health and education. He appeals for more understanding, more combined clinics, less paperwork, more consistent explanation to parents together with more education for parents. He highlights the difference in responses from those who listen and act accordingly and those who listen, understand, empathise, and act with compassion, and the passion of sharing the joy of any improvements in qualities of life for both the child and family. As the story moves on, we hear how Harris relates his son’s cluster of behaviours to the individual behaviours of both sides of his family, and how both parents lose their guilt that his problems are their fault. His son lived through the COVID-19 pandemic and Harris describes the concern of parents when they read that their children might be subject to do not attempt resuscitation orders without discussion and not be a priority to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
No expertise in the songs of Lennon and McCartney is needed as, with the same colourful patterns on the book cover, Harris wraps the whole text up with them, describing how they became the new language between his son and the world around him. The description of the concert when Harris and his son perform at school can never be forgotten and should not be forgotten. It describes the amazing gifts people affected by neurodiversity can use for everyone’s benefit if the opportunity to develop those gifts is not taken away from them.
This book cover sings out to be read, considered, and acted on to provide early useful assessment of those with disabling symptoms, and acceptance, understanding, and support to each other. Professionally we need to avoid ‘the societal need for discreet labels clearly hinder[ing] patient experience.’ 6 This book tells us how it can be done by ‘good people’ such as those Harris describes helping his son.
Featured book: John Harris, Maybe I’m Amazed: A Story of Love and Connection in Ten Songs, John Murray, 2025, HB, 272pp, £16.99, 978-1399814034
References
1. Pincus JH, Glaser GH. The syndrome of “minimal brain damage” in childhood. N Engl J Med 1966; 275(1): 27–35.
2. Silberman S. Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity. New York, NY: Avery Publishing Group, 2016.
3. Lang J, Wylie G, Haig C, et al. Towards system redesign: an exploratory analysis of neurodivergent traits in a childhood population referred for autism assessment. PLoS One 2024; 19(1): e0296077.
4. Grandin T. Different Not Less: Inspiring Stories of Achievement and Successful Employment from Adults with Autism, Asperger’s, and ADHD. Arlington, TX: Future Horizons, 2020.
5. Penny L. ‘I came out as autistic. Everyone said: That explains a lot’. The Observer 2025; 10 May: https://observer.co.uk/news/first-person/article/laurie-penny-autism (accessed 18 Jun 2025).
6. Couchman E. Books: Explaining AuDHD: Recognise It, Embrace It and Thrive With It. Br J Gen Pract 2025; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp25X742833.
Featured photo by Julien Chatelain on Unsplash.
