Contemporary childhood psycho-pathologization: a study on the expansion of the diagnoses of “attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity”

Abstract

The expansion of psychiatric labeling does not reach only the adult population, but also the problematic related to childhood have been captured by the speeches and practices of the medical-psychiatric knowledge and turned into psychopathologies which tend to be treated  with the main resource made available by psychiatrics in the present times: the psychotropic drugs. This work presents a critical thinking on the expansion of the diagnoses of “attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity” (ADHD) both in children and teenagers and on the conduction of drug therapies. It follows that the processes of childhood psycho-pathologization and the trivializing of psychotropic drug prescription are related to the overvaluation of the biological conception of psychic suffering and to the economic interests of the great pharmaceutical laboratories which by means of several strategies influence the medical practices, factors that lead to exposure of these patients to possible side effects and the risks of stigmatization that must be considered.