Editorial: ADHD: Science and society

Frontiers in Psychiatry

IntroductionThe descriptive classification Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is often mistaken for a disease entity that explains the causes of inattentive and hyperactive behaviors, rather than merely describing the existence of such behaviors. The present study examines discourse on ADHD to analyze how authors passively and actively contribute to reification—a fallacy in which a concept is represented as a thing existing on its own.MethodsCritical Discourse Analysis and Qualitative Content Analysis of academic textbooks, scientific articles, websites and videos were used to analyze how ADHD is reified.ResultsThe analyses reveal four ways in which inattentive and restless behaviors are presented as an entity by means of the ADHD classification: language choice, logical fallacies, genetic reductionism, and textual silence. First, language choice, such as medical jargon and metaphors aid in representing ADHD as a disease entity. Second, several logical fallacies do the ...

Frontiers in Psychiatry

Prior to the establishment and promotion of ADHD as a psychiatric disorder, the labels “minimal brain dysfunction” (MBD), “hyperactivity” (HA), and “learning disability” (LD) were diagnostic terms for children with hard-to-manage behaviors. At the time, these labels and the treatment interventions, especially the heavy reliance on stimulant medications, were subject to criticism. Nearly half a century later, these criticisms apply equally to ADHD, suggesting a disturbing lack of progress in this area of child psychiatry. Therefore, the aim of this article is to examine the scientific integrity of ADHD, to establish why this is the case. I use a philosophy of science framework to track the initial thinking, the plausibility, and the acceptance of ADHD. I establish that ADHD, along with the evolving biomedical model for psychiatry, was accepted in the third edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-III) as the result of bias and...

The aim of this article is to analyze the controversies surrounding ADHD and the process whereby this psychiatric unit was formed and constituted as a social and scientific fact. We focus mainly on the arguments around ADHD in the United States -this is dictated by significant differences between the ways to define and treat this disorder between various countries Cohen 2006: 14). The abovementioned controversies make us conscious of the fact that despite what a considerable number of psychiatrists, scientists and other "spokespeople" for the entity that is ADHD claim, the dominating approach to this disorder has not been based on self-evident, irrefutable scientific findings. What is more important, however, is that the quarrelling actors reveal the circumstances and the way in which the definition, as well as the methods of researching and treating ADHD were formed.

Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 2014

Medicating ADHD is a controversial subject that was acutely inflamed in 1995 when high rates of ADHD diagnosis and treatment were documented in southeastern Virginia. Psychologists in southeastern Virginia formed a regional school health coalition to implement and evaluate interventions to address the problem. Other professionals with strong ties to the pharmaceutical industry launched ad hominem attacks on the coalition's research and work. These attacks contributed to the work being terminated in 2005. In the ensuing years, ADHD drug treatment continued to escalate. Today, the national rate of ADHD diagnosis exceeds all reasonable estimates of the disorder's true prevalence, with 14 % of American children being diagnosed before reaching young adulthood. Notable key opinion leaders continue to claim that there is no cause for concern, but with a message shift from "the prevalence is not too high" to "high prevalence is not too concerning." This paper provides an object lesson about how innovative research can be derailed to the detriment of sound medical and mental health care of children when industry interests are threatened. Tenure may be the only option for protecting innovative research from specious attacks. The authors offer a summary of the data on ADHD drug treatments, suggest judicious use of such treatments, and add their voices to others who are once again sounding a cautionary alarm.

ADHD: the Byzantine Aetiology of Diagnosis

ADHD, its actuality and psychiatrists' methods of diagnosis

Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2008

A sociological approach to ADHD begins from the position that social and historical contexts matter deeply in the ways that ADHD is understood, experienced and managed. Thus, for example, intra-professional or parent-teacher discord over the correct way to deal with symptoms, shifts in economies and educational systems that provide services to families and children, gendered stereotypes and processes of racialization, or ways of framing children as risky to others or at-risk to themselves, are important aspects of how ADHD exists in the social world. ADHD is, sociologically speaking, a very interesting and important problem in great part because these social and historical aspects of ADHD continue to trouble medical and educational approaches to diagnosis and treatment. Diagnostic rates of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have burgeoned over the past decades, beginning in the United States in the 1970’s and 1980’s, then moving primarily into other developed countries in subsequent decades.. Despite much public debate, ADHD has been enormously ‘successful’ as a diagnostic category. Similarly, rates of treating ADHD-identified children with stimulant drugs have risen in much of the developed world, although diagnostic rates vary considerably both within and between countries. Some of the controversies underpinning the ADHD debates can be seen in sections on *Diagnostic Uncertainty* , * Nevertheless, ongoing and highly public debates persist concerning the diagnosis and medical treatment of ADHD. Researchers and lay writers have argued, for example, that children with ADHD symptoms who go untreated are at risk for adult depression, heightened rates of addiction and criminality, and increased school dropout rates. On the other hand, the risks for children who do receive a diagnosis have been argued to include stigmatization as a result of being labeled with a mental health condition and dependencies on medication in both the short and the longer term for children whose treatment is typically psychopharmaceutical ather than behavioural. Some writers have argued that while ADHD may be a legitimate medical or psychological condition, medication is not the most appropriate response to its treatment, and classroom interventions should be the first, and perhaps the primary, response to children’s challenges, particularly iwhen those challenges are experienced mainly in the classroom. Within this contested terrain, parents, children, educators and helping professionals must make critical decisions about how to best respond to and assist children who are identified as problematic. It is our hope that the following bibliography may help inform such decision-making positively.

European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 2011

European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 2002