Nottingham-born ex-footballer Jermain Pennant has revealed that before his diagnosis with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) he feared for his relationship. The former Stoke, Birmingham and Liverpool player said that he was very difficult to live with.
ADHD is a very complicated condition, according to the NHS, and has two main types of behavioural problems - inattentiveness (difficulty concentrating and focusing) and hyperactivity and impulsiveness. Jermaine, 39, who comes from The Meadows, told Good Morning Britain hosts Kate Garraway and Ben Shephard that it explained a lot of the problems he had in his life.
He said: “It’s huge. It’s life-changing. My partner now, if it wasn’t for me getting diagnosed, we probably would have broken up, because it’s so difficult to live with. I have to take melatonin at night because I can’t sleep. Coming on this show, I’ve already played this show out in my mind twice over.
Read more: Nottingham's Jermaine Pennant announces 'life-changing' diagnosis on Good Morning Britain
“It’s like trying to manage eight screens. It’s a very busy, active brain.” Tipping Point host Ben recalled learning how Pennant left a Porsche parked at a train station in Spain for five months after he completely forgot about it.
He now says his forgetfulness is down to a diagnosis of ADHD and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), linked to childhood trauma, and led to a number of poor life choices. On the advice of a fixer, Pennant paid £1.2m for a six-bedroom mansion in Cheshire in 2006 which he then forgot about after moving from Liverpool to Real Zaragoza in Spain three years later.
He left the house empty, but unbeknown to him, he was still paying the interest - only mortgage on it. The abandoned property was later broken into by a drugs gang and used as a cannabis farm.
ADHD symptoms official NHS advice:
- carelessness and lack of attention to detail
- continually starting new tasks before finishing old ones
- poor organisational skills
- inability to focus or prioritise
- continually losing or misplacing things
- forgetfulness
- restlessness and edginess
- difficulty keeping quiet, and speaking out of turn
- blurting out responses and often interrupting others
- mood swings, irritability and a quick temper
- inability to deal with stress
- extreme impatience
- taking risks in activities, often with little or no regard for personal safety or the safety of others – for example, driving dangerously
For more information on ADHD on the NHS click here.
Jermaine has been together with Jess Impiazzi for a year and she revealed she encouraged him to get tested. The actress and ex reality star, 33, claimed the former footballer’s recent diagnosis has ‘changed his whole life’ and that he now listens to her more, instead of being ‘irrational or impulsive’.
She told the Daily Mail: “He actually was diagnosed in July because I noticed something wasn’t right with him. Obviously, with his behavior in the past.... I was like, ‘let’s just get checked. There’s something not quite right.’”
Jess continued: "I’ve got a family member that has it and I was noticing things. I was like, 'OK, let’s just go and talk to therapist and the doctor'. Anyway, it changed his life when he got the diagnosis. He was able to focus, he figured out the reasons why he had done things in the past.
“As soon as you could figure that out, you can kind of stop because you don’t know what you don’t know, right? So now, he’s focusing. The minute he thinks of being irrational or impulsive, he can go, ‘hang on, that’s my ADHD.’ He has his medication and he will listen to me more, I’ll be like, “Jermaine this is a bit of your ADHD here, so let’s just have a chat first,” and he’s like, ‘OK, yeah, OK.’”
“I just thought it was down to me just being a lunatic or just not well and having serious issues but not actually identifying what they were.”
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