ABSTRACT
Curiously, unlike psychiatrist Michael Glicksman (1997), Yong seems oblivious to the chicken and egg scenario often associated with ADHD; i.e. is ADHD the cause of these problems or do social problems manifest in behaviours that come to be diagnosed as ADHD? Leaving questions of chickens, eggs and causality aside, I wish to concentrate on where this current media storm leaves us. […] Unless taken to the next level, all Judge Conlon’s comments will succeed in doing is to create yet another media stir. The accusation that doctors are creating violent young offenders by prescribing psychostimulant medication is guaranteed to get the media’s attention, which […] can be very diffi cult for the rest of us to do. But what does that actually achieve, and does ‘slamming’ (Australian Associated Press, 2007a) doctors help anyone in the long run? Actually, it doesn’t. What it does do is prematurely foreclose the debate. Here I would like to try to ram a hole through that closure in two ways. First, I will explain how media frenzies such as the one I describe simply (re)invent and (re)secure the medical construct. Second, and perhaps more importantly, I consider what the rest of us – especially those of us who work and live with children who can be described in these ways – can do to circumvent this.
