We tell the story of ADHD through our analysis of discourse in the areas of science, the popular media, the family, and from the point of view of personal experience. This volume is by no means comprehen- sive and does not, for example, represent the perspectives of health or education practitioners. These are addressed elsewhere, for example in Rafalovich (2004/2008) who provided an account of clinicians as medi- ators of ADHD and how ADHD is framed by teachers in the class- room; Bailey (2014) also studied ADHD in an educational context and Bradley and Butler (2015), examined the detailed interactions of a cog- nitive behavioural therapy programme for children with a diagnosis of ADHD. O’Reilly et al. (2017) have also used conversation analysis to examine the practitioner-family interactions in an initial assessment for autism spectrum disorder indicating the ways that mental health pathol- ogies are constituted in a medical context.
Chapter 2: Alison Davies charts the historical development of ADHD as a category and considers how changing and competing sci- entific, psychological and socio-environmental explanations have contributed to its controversial legacy. By adopting a historical frame- work, Davies shows that understandings of ADHD as a disorder have
The themes and issues of this book are picked up as threads that weave through the discourse of ADHD. These are taken up in a discussion of chapter topics that focus on different perspectives on ADHD. Themes are:
1. The socially and discursively constructed nature of ADHD 2. The social identities embedded in different representations of ADHD 3. Gendering as an integral part of the way that ADHD is understood 4. Resistance as a response to negative stereotypes
Fig. 1.1 Key themes of the book
been imbued with a moral discourse that continues to inform current discourse. She identifies some of the key issues and debates that have emerged from this historical background and considers how the iden- tities of individuals affected by ADHD are morally positioned within alternative explanations of ADHD that are biological, psychological or social. Davies returns to the themes of the book and the debates aris- ing from the historical perspective in this chapter, indicating how the key concepts of discursive psychology, interpretative repertoires and subject positions, can be applied to analyse the historicised discourse of ADHD.
Chapter 3: Mary Horton-Salway discusses the role of media discourse in representing ADHD and maps out some relevant research on ADHD in the media. The chapter discusses how the media frame the ADHD debate as a polemic, how representations of ADHD are produced and how they are gendered to produce stereotypes. The public engage with this material as both consumers and through feedback loops as produc- ers of discourse on ADHD. Of particular interest is the increase in pub- lic consumption of science knowledge and healthcare information via print, audio-visual and digital media. From this mass of information, how can the public tell what is accurate? This is discussed in relation to the ‘newsworthiness’ of stories, the reporting of ‘breakthrough science’
and the decline in the authority of science and medicine.
Chapter 4: This chapter turns to the discourse of parents as both consumers and producers ADHD discourse. Alison Davies examines first the perspective of mothers examining how they are positioned by dominant discourses of ADHD and parenting. She presents her original research on the experiences of mothers who have a child with ADHD to show how they make sense of ADHD when they talk about their chil- dren and family lives. In the family context, the identities of children, mothers and fathers (and sometimes extended family members and ancestors) are at stake when talking about the experience of ADHD.
Davies describes how mothers manage and resist negative stereotypes of their children and of themselves as parents. The chapter is situated within wider debates about parenting, such as those addressing issues of maternal responsibility and gendered caregiving. The tensions between
discourses constituting ‘mother-blame’ or mothers as the ‘expert parent’
responsible for child-care and health are explored in this chapter.
Chapter 5: This chapter turns to the experience of fathers who appear far less frequently within parenting literature and are marginal- ised by much of the literature relating to ADHD. Davies examines how fathers are positioned differently within the discourses of parenting and ADHD and how they represent themselves as good fathers in a support- ive role. The theme of gendering continues through this chapter in the way that fathers construct their own identities in relation to their sons with ADHD in terms of masculinity. The discussions in this chapter present a novel analysis of a father’s point of view that is rarely acknowl- edged in ADHD discourse.
Chapter 6: This chapter begins from the standpoint that personal experience accounts of mental health issues are important. For those who have personal experience of ADHD it is important that their voices are heard. Since ADHD has emerged as a mental health category that affects both children and adults, Mary Horton-Salway examines research on children, adolescents and adults with ADHD. The theme of gendering is elaborated further in this chapter because it has impor- tant consequences for children and adults in recognition and diagnosis of ADHD. The discourse of ADHD and cultural understandings shapes how individuals experience and interpret their lives, how others see them and how they see themselves. Horton-Salway examines the idea of narrative as a situated context for troubles-telling, positive talk and the transformation of selves. The chapter examines forms of resistance to pathologised versions of lives and spoiled identities and how accounts of personal experience are produced in response to the micro-politics of a social interaction, the context of troubles-telling and the wider context of ADHD discourse.
Chapter 7: Mary Horton-Salway draws together the key points ari s- ing from the different perspectives on ADHD, arguing that the mean- ing of ADHD is socially constructed in history and in the different
‘translations’ that are produced in public discourse and in people’s accounts of their own experience. The chapter summarises how ‘bat- tles over truth’ have produced ADHD as the epiphenomenal product of science, media, professional and lay discourse. Construction, resistance
and contestation are important aspects of how ADHD and other mental health categories are defined and understood and these social processes are discussed in relation to stigma, the decline of public trust in expert forms of knowledge and public take up of health knowledge as both consumers and producers. The issue of ‘resistance’ is also discussed in relation to the discourse of neurodiversity and the cultural politics of impairment in categories such as autism or ADHD. We conclude by considering the relevance of a social constructionist and discourse ana- lytic approach to inform educational and clinical practice in mental health care contexts.
An analysis of the discourse of ADHD is not complete without acknowledging the personal perspectives of health professionals and educationalists. There are some illuminating research studies that have examined those contexts in detail elsewhere but we suggest that further qualitative research on clinical contexts and the perspectives of health professionals and educators would be useful to maintain a productive dialogue about ADHD and other forms of mental health category.