Based upon analyses of interview data collected from twenty-six clinician respondents, this study explores two facets of clinician uncertainty related to the diagnosis and treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children. First, this study explores clinician reservations about the diagnostic validity of ADHD as it is described by the American Psychiatric Association (1994) in DSM IV . Second, this study explores clinician ambivalence regarding the physical and social-psychological sideeffects of stimulant medications, such as Ritalin. In applying the sociological discussions that address uncertainty in clinical settings and through reviewing a sizable cross-section of the popular and research-oriented literature demonstrating the contentious nature of the ADHD phenomenon, this study illustrates that clinicians do not practice within a vacuum, but are instead largely affected by the marked scepticism that surrounds ADHD. In being affected by this scepticism, it is concluded that clinicians who assess and treat ADHD are autonomous in how they interpret the diagnostic and treatment protocols for this mental disorder.
Using an interview‐based analysis of the accounts of interactions between educators, parents, and clinicians, this study explores educators' roles in interpreting childhood troubles as the medical phenomenon of attention deficit‐hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The analysis of interviews shows how children's “personal” troubles become understood as “relational” ones, prompting increasingly sophisticated social responses. I argue that the institution of education, operating in a clinical capacity but lacking the legitimate authority to assign ADHD diagnoses, plays a hybridized, semiofficial role in the medicalization process. This assertion informs a critique of the “informal/official” dichotomy found in the sociology of deviance lexicon, and furthers previous positions in the sociology of mental health that have implicated school representatives in the social construction of behavior disorders.
The following study is a qualitative analysis of the 12-step fellowship Narcotics Anonymous. Over a two-year period, ethnographic data were collected from over 150 NA meetings and codified using the principles of the research methodology grounded theory. Through an analysis of testimonials presented at the meeting level, a theory of the process of identity, specifically that of becoming a “recovering addict,” has been posited. The foundation for these testimonials lay within the presentation of “the story,” or typical NA testimony, found at every NA meeting this researcher attended. The story, it will be argued, constructs the narrative environment of NA and works in a reflexive relationship with identity. That is, addict identity is articulated through the language of the story, and the story itself cultivates this identity in the NA member. The components of the story are examined at considerable length, followed by a conceptual model that seeks to explain some of the dynamics of this identity phenomenon.
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