ADHD Discourse and Navigation of Identity/Subjectivity
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Preparation for a briefing on findings from independent research on discourse on ADHD and ADHD diagnosis (done as part of undergrad thesis for Scripps/Pomona College).
![Literature
Foucauldian analyses (theoretical perspective
on ADHD):
[overall body of literature]
Singh 2013 “Brain talk: power and negotiation
in children’s discourse about self, brain and
behavior.”
Bennet 2007 “(Dis)ordering Motherhood:
Mothering a Child with Attention-](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
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ADHD Discourse and Navigation of Identity/Subjectivity
- 1. ADHD Discourse and Navigation of Identity/Subjectivity
- 2. Literature Foucauldian analyses (theoretical perspective on ADHD): [overall body of literature] Singh 2013 “Brain talk: power and negotiation in children’s discourse about self, brain and behavior.” Bennet 2007 “(Dis)ordering Motherhood: Mothering a Child with Attention-
- 3. Questions debate between social constructionist and biological/organic (positivist) takes how do individuals diagnosed with ADHD experience it? if ADHD is a “social construction,” do diagnosees experience ambiguity and unsurety of interpretation? if ADHD is a “real condition,” do diagnosees feel adamant about need for diagnosis...
- 4. Methods 40 articles on ADHD from January 2013 to February 2015 random sampling within pool of (national?) articles pulled from database 5 1-hour long interviews, recorded and transcribed (recruitment?):
- 5. Findings (in progress) in popular media: a schism between takes on ADHD; debate very present diagnosees rely on social comparisons to accept or own ADHD status distinction between those severely impacted and borderline cases ADHD as a site of contested meaning
- 6. table visuals Stance on ADHD Diagnosis No Referral to Debate Referral to Debate, Even- handed Critique of ADHD Diagnosis/Treatment Defense of ADHD Diagnosis/Treatment Number of articles 13 (32.5%) 7 (17.5%) 17 (42.5%) 3 (7.5%)
- 7. pulled headlines (as examples of different type of articles) No Reference to Debate “A new study shows there’s a strong link between ADHD and premature death” “ADHD diet study suggests healthy eating might help kids” “Can anesthesia cause ADHD?” Even-handed Discussion of Debate
- 8. pulled quotes, passages try to find driving rationales, ideas underpinning different attitudes around ADHD
- 9. ADHD as Attribution [parts of interviews which explain how ADHD allows struggling individuals to attribute their difficulties to disorder--provide explanation, maybe externalize a little (but maybe ADHD can’t be completely externalized, either? difficulties are always going to be internal, to some extent?)]
- 10. Claiming ADHD “The base thing I do, I compare myself to individuals I know who have been diagnosed with ADHD... If I was diagnosed, I guess it would give me the green card to get prescribed medication and being able to use it, but, like, I think for me, it becomes the issue of, I don’t know if I deserve it, kind of. I know people with more extreme cases, and they need it more
- 11. interview analysis legitimacy of adhd as a “specter” basing claim to adhd or validity of status on comparisons to others with adhd (vein of social comparison theory?) problem of medicine for legitimacy of adhd (R1 as exemplar) biological sense of adhd, small amt of social
- 12. Conclusions people hesitate to claim adhd label; use social comparisons to say that they actually do or don’t have adhd my feeling is that the presence of skepticism around motivation for diagnosis (use for “sick role, benefits, prescribed drugs) --> difficulty claiming status see links to content analyzed
Editor's Notes
- Hi everyone, thank you for coming out today. My name is Rona Chong and my thesis is an exploration of the discourse on ADHD and the ways in which ADHD subjects navigate their identity and subjectivity in response to diagnosis.
- So ADHD has been a major topic of interest for many due to the “explosion” in diagnoses and the controversy over its treatment with medication. There’s a lot of clinical literature [attempting to identify the epidemiology] on ADHD, but I was really interested in what social theory had to say/there’s social theory as well. Looking at the literature on ADHD, I identified a few strains of thought. On one hand there are scholars like Conway, who identifies ADHD diagnosis as a source of resources and a tactical decision that individuals may make in order to navigate their social contexts (the idea of a “sickness role.”) On the other hand, seminal authors in the sociology of medicine, like Conrad, saw ADHD more as a domain and construct innovated by capitalist interest and medicalization. In this view, ADHD was a form of top-down regulation imposed upon the individual. I was curious about the competition between these two ideas of ADHD but I wanted to see what getting diagnosed with ADHD meant from the viewpoint of the individuals actually diagnosed with or wrestling with the idea of ADHD diagnosis. ------------------------------------------------------------------- So ADHD has been a major topic of interest for many due to the “explosion” in diagnoses and the controversy over its treatment with medication. There’s a lot of clinical literature [attempting to identify the epidemiology] on ADHD, but I was really interested in what social theory had to say/there’s social theory as well. Looking at the literature on ADHD, I identified a few strains of thought. On one hand there are scholars like Conway, who identifies ADHD diagnosis as a source of resources and a tactical decision that individuals may make in order to navigate their social contexts (the idea of a “sickness role.”) On the other hand, seminal authors in the sociology of medicine, like Conrad, saw ADHD more as a domain and construct innovated by capitalist interest and medicalization. So ADHD was a result of top-down regulation of individual productivity and behavior. I was curious about these two competing ideas about ADHD but I wanted to see what getting diagnosed with ADHD was like from the viewpoint of the individuals actually diagnosed with or wrestling with the idea of ADHD diagnosis. [I found a few ethnographic studies on individuals diagnosed with ADHD, but these didn’t delve as far into the impact of diagnosis as I would have liked. Meanwhile there were gender studies theorists studying how ADHD impacted subjecthood for the mothers of children with ADHD, noting the stigma and ideas of defect on mothers, but not so much individuals with ADHD themselves. I wanted to see how perceptions of ADHD might impact the individuals diagnosed. Content analysis by a couple scholars found that ADHD is primarily understood through biological lens but there is also an increasing skepticism towards the legitimacy of ADHD as a diagnostic construct as it is increasingly interpreted as a product of culture and “sick society,” rather than “sick individual.”]
- And also going into interest in ADHD was a recognition of this debate between social constructionist view of ADHD (which views ADHD as a product of culture) and the more positivist, organic view of the disorder (which views ADHD as a legitimate, biological condition). I wanted to understand--how do identifying as an ADHD subject work in a context in which the meaning of ADHD is contested, as well as its legitimacy? -------------------------------------------------------------- Recognizing the debate between the social constructivist view of ADHD and the positivist, organic view of the disorder, I wanted to understand: how does identifying as an ADHD subject work in a context of contested meaning and legitimacy?
- To go about my questions, I decided on a two-pronged methodology involved both content analysis and ethnographic research. For the content analysis, I looked at 40 articles on ADHD written between January 2013 and February 2015 by national publications and coded for attitudinal stances on ADHD as well as beliefs about ADHD causes. This was just to get a sense of the discourse surrounding ADHD that ADHD subjects must face. Then, in order to explore the experience of ADHD diagnosis, I conducted 5 1-hour long interviews with college students either diagnosed with ADHD or grappling with the idea of diagnosis. My sample was a small convenience sample, which meant that my findings are not generalizable; however, I really saw this as a way to seek an understanding of how a couple individuals experienced ADHD diagnosis and what this diagnosis meant for them. -------------------------------------------------------------------- To go about exploring this question, I interviewed 5 college students who were either diagnosed with ADHD or wrestling with the idea of having ADHD. These individuals were recruited through general advertisement of the study to the public and were self-volunteers. Because of the nature of the timeframes I had, the individuals who happened to volunteer were also individuals most familiar to study because of proximity to me, (they all knew me to varying degrees) and young women of color. So, it wasn’t something I set out to do, but because most of clinical studies on ADHD are based on white, male populations, my sample went against that pattern. To supplement my study of individual experiences with ADHD diagnosis, I also did content analysis of 40 recent popular articles on ADHD, written from January 2013 to February 2015, hoping to reach a measure of representability through random sampling from this pool. I looked to code for attitudinal stances on ADHD diagnosis and treatment as well as beliefs about the causes of ADHD. Recruitment was through a convenience sample. Although it was a small and non-representative sample, this was a way for me to seek an understanding of how a couple individuals experienced ADHD diagnosis and what this diagnosis meant for them.
- At this point in time, my data analysis is still in progress, but I have found a couple things that have particularly stuck out to me. The first is, the breakdown of attitudes towards ADHD in the 40 articles that I looked at. I found that the debate on ADHD’s legitimacy was considerably present in the media, with many articles devoted to critiquing the status quo of ADHD diagnosis and treatment--42.5%. On the other hand, there were also many articles which reported new findings about ADHD which simply bypassed any mention of debate at all (presumably assuming the validity of ADHD). My first thought when I saw this discrepancy was the conflicting messages these contradictory practices send to people thinking they have ADHD.
- Then, in my interviews, what I found was that getting an ADHD diagnosis was often a powerful way of attributing one’s difficulties to something outside of personality and one’s will, which corresponded to some of Bennett’s conclusions about the discursive salience of ADHD to moral subjecthood. My respondents described feelings of varying degrees of relief a positive diagnosis would or did provide. In this quote, one student explains how being diagnosed would be reassuring.
- At the same time, another thing that I found was that my respondents relied on social comparisons when justifying their status as ADHD subjects. By itself this wasn’t particularly surprising, except that all of my respondents were hesitant to fully claim an ADHD identity and right to treatment on the basis of how moderate their symptoms were. This indicated that unless symptoms were pronounced, my respondents felt they did not truly have a right to claim having ADHD, even if they felt that they had it to an extent.