HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE ASCENDANCY OF ADHD IN NORTH AMERICA, c. 1980 – c. 2005

ABSTRACT

An ecological niche framework ( Hacking, 1998 ) is utilised to examine the growth of ADHD in North America. The analysis suggests ADHD flourishes, at least in part, due to a complex and historically situated interaction of factors that created a niche within which a particular kind of explanation and treatment for the troubling behaviours of children can and does thrive.

Keywords:

• ADHD
• history
• historical ontology
• North America

Notes

¹ The countries included in this research include the United Arab Emirates (Amal et al., 1999), Hong Kong (Swanson et al., 1998; Leung et al., 1996), Brazil (Rhode et al., 1999), Columbia (Pineda, 2003), Puerto Rico (Swanson et al., 1998), Germany (Swanson et al., 1998); Baumgaertel et al., 1995), Sweden (Swanson et al., 1998), Australia (Kewley, 1998; Gomez et al., 1999), Canada (Szatmari et al., 1989), the USA (Kewley, 1998; Safer and Malever, 2000; Goldman et al., 1998) and Great Britain (Green et al., 2005; Kewley, 1998; National Institute for Clinical Excellence, 2000; Brasset-Grundy and Butler, 2004; Holowenko and Pashute, 2000; Swanson et al., 1998; Taylor et al., 1991) among others.

² A variety of explanations have been proposed to explain the rather remarkable differences in prevalence estimates that have been reported in the research literature, including: differences in the way ADHD is defined (National Institute for Clinical Excellence, 2000), the means by which it is identified (Swanson et al., 1998), whether researchers draw their samples from clinical populations or randomly from the larger population (Brasset-Grundy & Butler, 2004) and differences in perspectives about the causes of the behaviours captured by the label (Barkley, 1997; Kewley, 1998).

³ Transient mental illnesses are those that are present and pervasive in some times and places but absent in others. It does not refer to the transient nature a particular type of mental illness may have within particular individuals across time, but instead suggests ‘... that this type of madness exists only at certain times and places’ (Hacking, 1998, p. 1).

⁴ Fugue is the name of a mental illness popular in nineteenth century France (and to a lesser extent Italy, Germany, and Russia) characterised by unexpected trips, often taken in obscured states of consciousness (Hacking, 1998).