Today's 'ADHDscape' is no longer confined to images of fidgety children falling off classroom chairs. Trans-generational images flood popular culture, from 'ADHD creator' with entrepreneurial style, to 'ADHD troublemaker'. Indeed, ADHD's enigmatic characteristics seem to apply as much to crying babies as to forgetful grannies. With the recent expansion of ADHD definitions (Conrad, 2007), the key question to pose becomes how and in what ways is ADHD 'understood'? By drawing on the association between 'ADHD' as a mental disorder, and 'medicalization' as a social phenomenon, and in the interactionist tradition utilized in Peter Conrad's sociological analysis of ADHD, this paper presents aspects of the complex nature of ADHD through a description of contrasting perspectives.
Abstract: