In March 2023, Dr Gabor Maté, a retired family physician and among the most respected trauma experts in the world, boldly diagnosed Prince Harry with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), during a live interview.
Having read the Duke of Sussex’s ghost-written memoir, Spare, Maté said that he had arrived upon “several diagnoses” that also included depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. These were not evidence of disease per se, Maté went on to elaborate. Rather, he said: “I see it as a normal response to abnormal stress.”
What Maté did is nowhere near customary clinical procedure: a diagnosis requires a structured assessment and adequate time with a patient. And to render a diagnosis publicly raises obvious privacy concerns.
