Abstract
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2017-05-29T11:36:06-07:00
This study examines under-representation among various sections of the Greater Seattle population in the diagnosis and experience of ADHD. Specifically, it explores the cultural formations and sites of ADHD through ethnographic interviews with a diverse group of participants—psychologists, psychiatrists, adults with ADHD, and parents of children with ADHD. The work is motivated by several key questions about how ADHD is identified and treated. Why are boys diagnosed more often than girls? How do schools become sites for diagnosis and how does this complicate or perpetuate gendered discourses about the disorder? What are the politics of difference in medical research and parental discipline surrounding ADHD? Taking a local school district’s Special Services Review
Report as the launch pad, the study considers these questions through a framework of feminist disability studies,
feminist science, technology and society studies, neurodiversity, education policy and agnotology, exercising multiple forms of address to cater to different sets of audiences: school district administrators, academicians, children, parents, and teachers.
