Abstract
This chapter introduces Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as one of the most debated mental health categories affecting both children and adults across the globe. Any medical category is as much a product of history, culture and social processes as it is a scientific discovery and this chapter considers how the processes of fact construction and positivist forms of science have been challenged by social constructionism. Two models of medicine have shaped the meaning of ADHD, such that social and psychological worlds have been incorporated into the ‘medical gaze’. This chapter takes a language based approach to the study of ADHD describing a blend of micro and macro analyses applied to the historical discourse of ADHD, how different perspectives are drawn on in the media and personal accounts to represent facts and social identities. We consider what kinds of representation of reality are constructed, how they are drawn from cultural and historical discourse and how they are used by media and in personal accounts.
Keywords
- Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
- Mental Health Categories
- Social identitiesSocial Identities
- Discursive Psychology
- Subject positionsSubject Positions
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Horton-Salway, M., Davies, A. (2018). Introduction. In: The Discourse of ADHD. The Language of Mental Health. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76026-1_1
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