ADHD

In the 1960s, the famous psychiatrist R.D. Lang made the point that insanity was nothing more than a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world. Antipsychiatry was the flavor of the day as the old “snake pit” form of institutional psychiatry was finally shown to be not only useless but cruel. During the sixties, sociology and psychology first started working together. We see what Lang thought.

From the sociological side, the wisdom was that labeling theory. Labeling theory is a two-part belief system. One part is that deviant behavior does not mean behavior that violates the societal norms but behavior which is labeled as deviant. In other words, the deviance is not in the act but in the public perception of the act. The second component is that labeling the behavior creates deviance. If a person is labeled deviant, the person accepts the label as a true reflection of self. Labeling does not look at behavior and speculate why certain people behave this way but they look at the act of labeling and speculate why this behavior is labeled deviant.

The understanding of how people work began with science and then moved into sociology so it got to the point that if someone was labeled, they began to behave according to the label. Basically this means if you are told you have a disorder, you start to behave according to the label, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The terrible thing that happened was that with the labelling thoery, behaviors began to be judged more quickly as unsuitable. What was once considered normal behavior began to be seen in a different light and the labels were not medical or social but psychological.

Looking at the labeling approach to behavior, one of the things that happened was that suddenly overly exuberant children were diagnosed with ADHD.  This was not the only such situation. For instance, depression became dysphoria rather than plain old unhappiness.

At the same time medicine was emerging with a whole new kind of treatment -- pills. New and improved drugs were more available. Prozac became a popular way to deal with depression and led people to realize that mental illness was treatable and therefore not a label that had to be attached permanently to the person.

ADHD had the same response and suddenly a hyperactive child was being plied with Ritalin and such drugs. This hubpage is going to take a closer look at ADHD and how it grew.