<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>Little is known about how teachers and doctors make sense of ADHD. Drawing on a corpus of online accounts, we reconstructed their worldviews with a qualitative analysis. While both professional groups referred to a male troublemaker and to the German literary figure of the Fidgety Phil, they also expressed rival expert claims. Doctors represented the scientific authority in labeling and diagnosing ADHD, whereas teachers attached objective meaning to the medical judgement by pathologizing deviant behavior and justifying measures of control.</p>
</abstract>

Little is known about how teachers and doctors make sense of ADHD. Drawing on a corpus of online accounts, we reconstructed their worldviews with a qualitative analysis. While both professional groups referred to a male troublemaker and to the German literary figure of the Fidgety Phil, they also expressed rival expert claims. Doctors represented the scientific authority in labeling and diagnosing ADHD, whereas teachers attached objective meaning to the medical judgement by pathologizing deviant behavior and justifying measures of control.

The Making of ADHD: A Comparative Content Analysis of Teachers’ and Doctors’ Worldviews

Department of Pediatrics, Cantonal Hospital

Swiss Journal of Sociology

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Little is known about how teachers and doctors make sense of ADHD. Drawing on a corpus of online accounts, we reconstructed their worldviews with a qualitative...

The Making of ADHD: A Comparative Content Analysis of Teachers’ and Doctors’ Worldviews

Published Online: Jul 12, 2022

Page range: 317 - 334

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/sjs-2022-0014

Keywords
ADHD, social construction, mental illness, mental health literacy, content analysis

© 2022 Dominik Robin et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The Making of ADHD: A Comparative Content Analysis of Teachers’ and Doctors’ Worldviews

Published Online: Jul 12, 2022

Page range: 317 - 334

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/sjs-2022-0014

KeywordsADHD, social construction, mental illness, mental health literacy, content analysis

© 2022 Dominik Robin et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
ADHD, social construction, mental illness, mental health literacy, content analysis