Current trends in medicalisation: Universalising ADHD diagnosis and treatments

Abstract

There is a wide sociological debate that documents how inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsive behaviours from a certain point forward cease to be disturbing behaviours and become childhood psychiatric disorders—named attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders (ADHD)—to be responded to with specific treatments since these behaviours are supposed to have a negative or pervasive impact on social and personal functioning and quality of life. Looking back over the stages of this debate, the article will focus on what, in recent years, are the two main directions of the expansion of the domain of medicalisation: on the one hand, discussing how the ADHD category has changed by moving from being typically a childhood problem to a disorder that can affect adults and, on the other, how it tends to globalise conquering new markets outside the United States, Canada, and Australia. The article concludes commenting on how the processes of lifelong expansion and worldwide diffusion is universalising the medical category, overcoming the disciplinary and geographical boundaries in which ADHD was created and developed.