Essentialist beliefs about attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): an empirical study with preservice teachers

Commentary: Perspectives on ADHD in children and adolescents as a social construct amidst rising prevalence of diagnosis and medication use

“…This phenomenon is firmly established for internalizing disorders: The more people attribute their problems to biology, the longer they expect them to last ( 18 , 19 ), the poorer they perceive their own coping skills ( 20 ), and the more negative they rate their prognosis ( 21 ). A single study on ADHD mirrored this trend: experimentally induced individualized, decontextualized beliefs about ADHD led to pessimistic expectations about the child’s potential ( 22 ). This resembles with other work demonstrating that academic expectations of children with ADHD are disproportionately low ( 23 ), as also mentioned by Banaschewski and colleagues.…”