Phil Anderton, CEO of ADHD 360, speak passionately about his mission to help every individual through diagnosis and support
There are very few poacher turned gamekeeper stories that ring true, but Phil Anderton can justifiably claim to have one. A former senior police officer, he made it his mission to help youngsters turning to crime to identify the cause of their behaviour. His findings led to a national UK policy, the Youth Crime Action Plan, and since leaving the force he has devoted his career to consolidating this work, both nationally and internationally.
“About 20 years ago my chief constable Sir Paul Stephenson came into my office to say there were too many young people coming into the criminal justice system and he needed me to sort it out,” he tells Healthcare World. “I asked my team to look into what we could be doing better to keep young people out of crime. One of my sergeants Steve Brown brought up a genetic condition called ADHD or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder which is passed on genetically the same as height, it’s 80% inheritable. It presented an explanation for the reasons that some people come into crime and criminality, not least of which is difficulty regulating emotions, a propensity to try substances, to abuse alcohol, and an inability to control impulse in terms of conflict situations leading to assaults, and so on.”
At this time it was so unusual to discuss mental health in conversations about crime that Phil had to co-opt serious academic and clinical research to validate his hypothesis. “I didn’t want to go public without this validation for fear that the message would be mistaken and the police would be accused of demonising individuals for being unwell.”
For six months he and his team worked with support from some of the most eminent psychiatric researchers and clinicians in the world. Once they discovered the statistic that 5 per cent of the general population has ADHD, and that 25 per cent of the prison population has ADHD, it confirmed his hypothesis.
The chief constable gave the green light for Phil to instigate this new way to combat crime.
“For example, if a young person received a warning by the police, we began to log those warnings,” he recalls. “On the second warning the perpetrator would be referred for ADHD assessment and it proved to be quite successful. We did some work with magistrates on how to convene a court to be more sensitive to ADHD to give people a fairer trial, and we did a serious amount of parochial work as well.”
Soon Phil and his team were asked to North America to speak about their work, and their methods also gained more traction back in the UK. “We met a couple of times with central government and we went to 10 Downing Street to look at policy,” he says. “These meetings led to the publication of a national Youth Crime Action Plan which included ADHD as a causation factor.”
The rise of ADHD 360
After leaving the police force at 43, Phil became a management consultant ultimately with PWC, but he still maintained his links with ADHD. “I approached one of the big pharmaceutical companies and suggested they think about bringing new drugs to market slightly differently. I knew that NHS clinics are very inefficient and I asked to be supported for two years to change this,” he says. “My premise was that if the clinics see more patients, more people would be treated and their market share would increase.”
Most of the medications for ADHD are in the controlled drug bracket and according to Phil they are valuable, well researched, hard crafted drugs. “They stimulate activity in the right parts of the brain – basically where the brain doesn’t have enough dopamine in simple terms. These medications stimulate the production or the availability of more dopamine, and it’s our job at ADHD 360 to put you clinically on the right level.”
He goes on to say that the deficit of dopamine in the brain isn’t something that can be overcome on a permanent basis. As the medication wears off, the patient returns to their normal deficit position. “The medicine cannot cure the situation, but it helps people avail themselves of the opportunity to live their best lives.”
After two years and having published a paper on what excellence would look like in an ADHD clinic, Phil decided to set one up with two colleagues. “We thought we’d see 20 patients a month, but this month we’ll see 1200 and we’re still we’re still not keeping up with demand!”
ADHD 360 is a telehealth clinic that assesses individuals via video conference questionnaires and then moves affected people into a treatment plan. “People are far more aware of ADHD than before,” he says. “We see many young people and children because waiting lists are at least two or three years on the NHS, which is too long at a young age. In addition, we see many adults coming through because previously there were no adult services, so our youngest patient is five and our oldest patient is 76.”
ADHD 360 success and beyond
Phil often wears ADHD 360 branded clothing as he goes about his daily life, and this has led him into chance encounters with former patients. Recently he walked into an Apple Store to fix his phone, when one of the floor walkers noticed his t shirt and asked Phil about his role in the company. “When I told him, he called over his colleagues and told them that I had changed his life by allowing him to be the man he is.
“Just 48 hours later, I was chatting to a schoolteacher on a train about neurodiversity in the classroom. Another passenger leaned over and said: ‘I’m a patient of yours and you’ve changed my life. Would you mind meeting my wife because you’ve changed her life as well. Just looking at her face was the perfect thank you and it’s quite humbling to understand you can bring about such a change.”
On an international level, the organisation has assessed English people in Australia and the Middle East. But language is not a barrier, and they are looking to work with the Asian community in the northwest of England with clinicians who are multilingual. For Phil, it’s a continuation of the job he first started as a police officer. As he says, “I was a cop asking the NHS to do more to keep people out of crime. Now we are on contract to the NHS, doing what we can to keep young people out of crime. You don’t get many poachers and gamekeeper stories with better ending than this.”