Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Little is known about how teachers and doctors make sense of ADHD. Drawing on a corpus of online accounts, we reconstructed their worldviews with a qualitative analysis. While both professional groups referred to a male troublemaker and to the German literary figure of the Fidgety Phil, they also expressed rival expert claims. Doctors represented the scientific authority in labeling and diagnosing ADHD, whereas teachers attached objective meaning to the medical judgement by pathologizing deviant behavior and justifying measures of control.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most common mental disorder in childhood worldwide. In Switzerland, regional studies indicated an increase in pharmacological treatment, which has led to concerns among politicians, scientists and affected families. This research project investigated how parents choose the treatment for their children, how pediatricians diagnose and treat ADHD, how teachers deal with ADHD, how the different actors cooperate and, most importantly, how affected children can be placed in the center of the efforts. The project used a mixed-method approach. Participants in Switzerland were recruited with the help of professional associations. Parents and teachers/health educators filled in an online survey (n=87 and n=125, respectively) and were interviewed (n=8 and n=10, respectively). Pediatricians filled in an online survey (n=223). The analysis of the parent survey showed that the path to a treatment decision is characterized by lengthy treatment histories. As most important reason for pharmacological treatment, parents reported the suffering, which manifested itself in a variety of problems that started in the school environment but then spilled over to the family system. As central finding from the responses of teachers/health educators and pediatricians, actors from the child's environment (i.e., teachers, physicians, and parents) should cooperate in "round table" meetings that serve to informing the actors and to destigmatizing and involving the child. To promote the well-being of the child, ADHD must be understood, diagnosed and treated as a multifactorial phenomenon. In addition to knowledge, communication and cooperation between the actors are important. The data also suggest a paradigm shift, whereby the conventional "bio-medical" model has already been replaced by an alternative "social construction" model that takes children's environment into account.