In classrooms throughout the United States children that exhibit the key attributes of the problem student-inattention and disobedienceare frequently labeled with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and prescribed Ritalin or other psychostimulants. From 1990 to 1995, the number of children and adolescents diagnosed in the United States rose from 950,000 to over 2.3 million, and doubled over the following five years. In the last fifteen years of the twentieth century, the production of Ritalin in the United States increased 1700 percent.1Amidst this expansion of diagnoses, numerous critics have emerged from diverse fields, publishing books and articles throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Many have agreed with pediatrician Lawrence H. Diller that there has been too much focus on biological rather than psychosocial factors in causing ADHD, leading to eager medication of children and overdiagnosis. A connection between psychiatry and drug manufacturers in the 1990s encouraged this trend, and Ritalin was marketed as an inexpensive and safe quick fix. Diller writes, message reduces a complex socio-developmental undertaking like homework to a problem with the child's brain... No one needs to make changes in lifestyles, expectations, or strategies. It's just the student's brain. To question otherwise is to risk the politically incorrect charge of holding parents, schools, or even children responsible (13).Along with other critics, Diller observes a growing intolerance of diversity of personality in American culture. This idea has a long history relating to social control theory and general antipsychiatry criticism, which frames the science of the mind as a means of controlling non-conforming or deviant people.2 Ideas of anti-psychiatry also relate to Michel Foucault's theory of the use of bio-power to examine, regulate and discipline the body. More recent writers on the topic, such as Christopher Lane, Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakefield, who examine social anxiety and depression, issue related disapproval of established psychiatry's trend to pathologize behaviors and feelings formerly considered to be within the normal spectrum of emotion and behavior, threatening to narrow the range of human experience and personality.Even if we do not deny its biological reality3, it is difficult to argue with the hypothesis that represents a form of medical social control, which allows deviance to be defined and treated medically. Among the various descriptions of children with the disorder are found many common problems of childhood disobedience, and not necessarily hyperactivity. The different subtypes of are hyperactive, predominantly inattentive and mixed, which formerly was defined as ADD. These subcategories include immaturity and the inabilities to pay attention, listen, or finish school assignments. The hyperactive type includes children thought to be overemotional, aggressive, and impulsive while those with ADHD-non-hyperactive or inattentive type lack these characteristics and can be classified by a more passive, quiet, easily bored and introspective nature. Clearly, these behaviors pose problems for teachers as well as parents. As Paul Neufeld and Michael Foy point out, ADHD and its precursors have always been first and foremost about behaviours in children that adults find troubling (454).Critics have highlighted the social nature of by emphasizing factors which might cause disruptive behavior or which might encourage diagnosis. A focus on education, parenting, and American culture has been important in combating ideas that is solely chemical. Neufeld and Foy have argued that a remarkably widespread celebration of excess (458) in America was one factor in the predominance of ADHD. Modern consumerism is also associated with a quick-fix model which supports the wide use of prescription medicine for mental disorders and illnesses.Lack of discipline from parents and teachers is important for Diller, who often guides parents to maintain stricter rules for their children. …
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Jun 1, 2024
Kapanova + 2
Open Access