The Risk Society and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): a critical social research analysis concerning the development and social impact of the ADHD diagnosis.

This article reports the findings of a research study that used a critical social research methodology to review the increase in use of the diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and conceptualized the phenomenon within a theoretical framework based upon Beck's (1992, 1999) periodization of social change, the Risk Society. The study was qualitative in nature. Data were drawn from a wide range of sources including legitimating hearings, reports and studies, texts and seminal documents, field observations in schools and classrooms, and electronic discussion/bulletin board, and in-depth interviews with parents and teachers. The analysis used a critical framework to locate specific instances of claim and counter-claim and to set the historical context for understanding the "modern biological" method of intervention with children considered by parents and teachers as having ADHD. The findings of the study are structured in the context of risks. Further research will inform whether the risks become threats. Through exposure of silences, myths, contradictions and power relationships that create risks surrounding the ADHD phenomenon, it is hoped that discourse concerning the hegemonic medical model of ADHD in research and in the wider community will be further critically examined.

A boy who stops taking stimulants for "ADHD": commentaries on a Pediatrics case study.

This article presents eight commentaries on a case study published in the journal Pediatrics in 2001. The case study, introduced in Pediatrics to highlight the issue of adolescents' compliance with drug treatment in a "high-prevalence neurobehavioral condition," briefly describes an adolescent boy who announces that he no longer needs the methylphenidate he was prescribed for ADHD and had been taking for the last five years. We invited experienced professionals from the disciplines of psychiatry, psychology, counseling, education, and occupational therapy to comment on the case and make recommendations to the adolescent boy in the case study, his family, and professionals. Their commentaries highlight issues rarely discussed in the mainstream literature, including: the extent to which ADHD is erroneously portrayed and vigorously managed as a disease; the lack of validity of the ADHD construct in adolescence; the widespread use of stimulants as performance-enhancing drugs; the need to respect an adolescent's gut instinct and developing decisions; the importance of family dynamics in ADHD-like situations; the need to ease stimulant withdrawal effects; and the human rights of children prescribed psychotropic drugs.