Medicalization of Neurodivergence and the Embodied Experience of ADHD

Bibliographic Data

ID21616635
AuthorsColin Cameron (0000-0001-7067-0956, Ohio University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume39
Issue13
Pages3507-3510
Publication date2024-11-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHealth Communication (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1041-0236 • E-ISSN: 1532-7027
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10410236.2024.2311471
PMID38326299
OpenAlexW4391650429
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited9

Medicalization shapes, and in some cases legitimizes, individuals' embodied experiences even as it molds the landscape of healthcare and treatment. In this essay I provide a layered account that moves between my experiences as a neurodivergent person and academic theorizing to explore how processes of medicalization inform public discourses and personal sensemaking. In the case of ADHD, medicalization has contributed to societal narratives that focus on symptoms of hyperactivity rather than the etiology of dopamine dysregulation. Such narratives fail to fully account for the lived experience of ADHD and inadvertently stigmatize neurodivergent individuals. I urge scholars and practitioners to direct more attention to the communicative dimensions of medicalization including both the rhetorical nature of the diagnostic process and how diagnoses, in turn, are rhetorically framed with varying consequences

Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Foregrounding · Medicalization · Narrative · Political science · Psychiatry · Public relations · Rhetorical question · Sensemaking · Sociology · Autism Spectrum Disorder Research · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations · Psychology

Tools

Open DOI