Lecture 20: ADHD Flashcards

1
Q

Causes of ADHD - POV of Thomas Armstrong

A
  • Canaries in the coal mine
  • ADHD is a symptom of a sick society - creates unrealistic expectations for children (leads to Medicating them which is harmful)
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2
Q

AD(H)D: Norms and disciplining institutions

A
  • Life stages (childhood)
  • Family (motherhood)
  • Education (citizens vs workers competition between schools) - education is changing in its expectations - raising citizens to now raising workers
  • Medicine - how we should medicate ADHD.
    - Malacrida, Claudia - looks at ADHD as something that gives us information about society
    - Ethnographic work - more nuanced and anchored in our daily life (she is a step forward in sociological thinking)
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3
Q

What does Claudia Malacrida explore?

A
  • Foucauldian discourse analysis
  • Feminist standpoint theory
  • Ethnography - goes into the field and encounters different institutions - key to understand how our interactions with institutions are shaped.
  • Experiences of mothers caring for “different children” and the discursive practices and powers of professionals
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4
Q

What is discourse? What does Michel Foucault define it as?

A

● Michel Foucault,
Discourse” isn’t just language, but a system of knowledge and power that shapes how we think, speak, and act
● This system shapes social structures and power relations
● Power is not simply exerted from the top down (it is something that we self-impose on ourself, reality around us creates what is right and wrong)
● It is produced and exercised through discourse.
● Discourses shape our understanding of the world, and in doing so, they also shape our actions and behaviors

Ie: sexuality is an example of discourse
Knowledge about sexuality is diffuse, surrounds us in everyday life.

ie: Gossip is a form of social discourse (diffuse understanding)

ie: Health is an example of social discourse - what should the body should look like

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5
Q

How do we learn what is normal?

A
  • Norms are part of the discourse.
  • Where are they coming from amd how they are imposed.
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6
Q

Is ADHD a neurobiological condition or is it a symptom of something going wrong in society (like armstrong suggests)?

A
  • overworking career moms are neglecting the kids (on one hand)
  • Moms are irresponsible, undiscipline
  • Moms are pushing kids too fast (overachieving) - overmedicate their kids
  • Mothers are blamed regardless which way you look into this.
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7
Q

Children with AD(H)D “at risk”

A
  • These Children are seen to be at risk for themselves but also risk to others.
  • For themselves: social isolation, low self-esteem, depresssion, suicide
  • A danger for society: potential school failure,antisocial,lacking in judgment, risk-takers, and have high rates of alcoholism, unemployment, and criminality in adulthood
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8
Q

AD(H)D: History and Culture - Claudia Malacrida
How is social control constructed? Policy is a discourse

A

● ‘Psychiatrization of difference
Medicalization - Larger parts of our lives come under the medical domain
- More and more things that we do is examined by physicians and prescribed in terms of health
● Childhood – the most intensely regulated field
- Childhood was constructed, we keep reinventing childhood, shaped and re-shaped by social construct.
- Childhood = space that adults need to protect, beings need to be constantly regulated in order for them to be protected.
● Knowledge sharing between school clinics, pediatric medicine psychology
- Contact between all these institutions is becoming more and more unified.
● Medical surveys and statistics
- Appearance of data collection (medical data…), constant information and statistical data
- More data = greater range of what is normal (a larger spectrum) - more and more of them are identified as difficult due to all this data and information
● Individual children are measured against the LARGE NORMAL
● The difficult child, the neurotic child, the eneuretic child, the maladjusted child, the unstable child, the delicate child, and the solitary child
● “Precariously normal” and require constant vigilance
- Now all these children are constantly on the brink of falling into these bad categories

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9
Q

Medically accepted diagnosis - Claudia Malacrida

A

● AD(H)D is a behaviourally based diagnostic category that could be applicable to all children
● Development of a reputedly benign medical treatment (Ritalin)
- Protect these kids from falling into this bad categories
● AD(H)D has become normalized in popular discourse
● Arsenal of assessment tools
-Parents are worried about their kids falling into these categories.
- Various approaches to deal with it.

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10
Q

Social problems approach: what is a moral entrepeneur?

A
  • ‘Moral entrepreneurs’ - often the value system of society is at stake with this problem
    - Individuals who use the strength of their positions to encourage others to follow their moral stances (usually without any actual evidence).
    - Public figures, parents or concerned citizens
  • Moral entrepreneurs are the “rule creators” who typically argue that their cause is for the betterment of individuals (Becker 1963)
  • ‘Moral entrepreneurs’ act in formal and informal ways to legitimate an aspect of social life (Conrad and Schneider 1980)
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11
Q

Who are the moral entrepeneurs when it comes to ADHD?

A
  • Pharmaceutical companies - start to gain traction especially in US
  • The medical profession,
  • Government,
  • Parental lobby groups - tend to push in both directions
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12
Q

How are these groups moral entrepeneurs?

A

Parental groups
* ‘Sick’ children instead of ‘bad’ children are more likely to receive services than punishment
- Not deserving of punishment but deserving of extra time.
* Parents are less stigmatized
- If a child is not showing bad behaviour, the child is actually in need of medical care.

Pharmaceutical companies
* 1960s onward - intensive marketing with physicians
* Retalin is marketed to medical professionals who then recommend to parents

Governmental committee comprised of physicians
* ‘Only physicians make the diagnosis and prescribe treatment’
* Medical rather than behavioural or social interpretation of its cause and treatment

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13
Q

Education system role in ADHD

A

● Transformations in the labour market late 1950s
- You need more and more education to integrate into the market
● Industrial - > a technological revolution
● Demand for math- and science-based curriculum
- Result of the labour markets
● Longer training period before employability
● Higher levels of attention and concentration
● Docile and compliant student body
- Listen carefully, sit long hours → more docile individuals
● Chronic problem with students/teachers ratio
- 1 teacher for many students, demands are not met
● From punishment to discipline
● Funds to schools with identified AD(H)D children
- More funding will go to schools with more diagnosis of ADHD - makes sense to diagnose children.

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14
Q

Education System - The Hidden Curriculum

A

● Education helps children to move beyond differences of class, race, gender, and ability.
● Latent functions of education: the replication of social class structure
● Hidden Curriculum: student-teacher interactions, classroom structure an bureaucratic organization

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15
Q

Motherhood
Knowledge:freedom/oppression

A
  • Mother as a consumer of and handmaid to disciplinary knowledge
  • Medical knowledge about raising a healthy child
    - Mothers start to educate themselves more and more - what the health of children should look like.
    Educational knowledge about ideal socialization, emotional wellbeing, intellectual development
    - Being educated by experts to know what is healthy for your children, for your family → foucault way (expert advice)
  • Mothers are accountable to physicians, educators,welfare and social workers, and family doctors.
    - Held accountable for how well they raise their children and held to certain standards.
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16
Q

Good mother - “Intensive mothering”

A
  • Child centered,
  • Expert guided,
  • Emotionally absorbing,
  • Labor intensive,
  • Financially expensive
    The measure of a good mother is a perfect child
17
Q

Sites of surveillance and management of AD(H)D - mothers are constantly surveilled for how well they are doing in:

A

● The home,
● The community,
● The day care or preschool
● The psychologist’s office,
● The hospital,
● The physician’s office,
● The school.

18
Q

How are Parents being pushed by school to think about diagnosis

A

In the case of discrepancies between parent and professional assessments relating to AD(H)D, ‘primary consideration should be given to the teacher reports because of greater familiarity with age-appropriate norms’ (Kiger, 1985: 79 in Malcarida 2003).

19
Q

What is the most significant stress for mothers?

A
  • expert opinion and professional orders: constant expectations for mothers to justify their actions to others
20
Q

Debate over the legitimacy of ADHD

A

● Psychiatrists,
● Psychologists,
● Physicians,
● Nutritionists,
● Educators
● Community

Everyone has different opinions