Heroic struggles, criminals and scientific breakthroughs: ADHD and the medicalization of child behaviour in Australian newsprint media 1999–2009

Figures & data

Table I. Number of newsprint articles in dataset, by year and month.

	1999	2001	2003	2005	2007	2009	Totals
Jan	1	3	6	6	7	2	25
Feb	6	6	4	6	5	0	27
Mar	1	11	7	11	22	1	53
Apr	0	5	6	3	40	3	57
May	7	2	4	1	10	5	29
Jun	3	16	2	6	7	4	38
Jul	5	2	0	7	4	1	19
Aug	9	9	7	22	6	6	59
Sep	3	10	2	12	9	4	40
Oct	1	0	0	15	5	6	27
Nov	4	7	5	13	10	8	47
Dec	4	6	2	5	9	6	32
Totals	44	77	45	107	134	46	453

Table II. Geographical spread of newsprint articles reviewed, by print format.

	ACT	NSW	NT	QLD	SA	TAS	VIC	WA	Totals
Broadsheet	18		0	27	0	0	21	0	125
Tabloid	0	99	9	22	52	28	31	87	328
Totals	18		9	49	52	28	52	87	453

Table III. Frequency of sub-topics within metaphoric theme category.

	n
The metaphoric theme of struggle (n = 94)
General	2
Struggles for rights	27
Rescue/escape narratives
Struggle from/against the malign influence of the drug	15
Struggle from/against the malign influence of ADHD	50
The metaphoric theme of fault (n = 204)
General	12
Good guy/bad guy	1
Drugs relating to crime	28
Fault of doctor	52
Fault of teacher	54
Faults of parents	8
Faults of pharmaceutical companies	32
ADHD drug traffickers as criminals	17
The metaphoric theme of scientific breakthrough (n = 123)
General	14
New wonder cures	34
Pseudo-scientific jargon used	8
Talks of tests/scans/chemical names	36
Magic bullet promised	31