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Psicología, Conocimiento y Sociedad
On-line version ISSN 1688-7026
Abstract
MARTINHAGO, Fernanda. ADHD in social networks: ways to medicalization of childhood. Psicol. Conoc. Soc. [online]. 2018, vol.8, n.2, pp.68-83. ISSN 1688-7026. https://doi.org/10.26864/pcs.v8.n2.6.
Childhood medicalization is evident in the contemporaneous; due to an epidemic of mental disorders that affects children and adolescents. From this perspective, a part of the child and adolescent public is considered to be undermined by misdiagnosed psychiatric diagnoses and unnecessary treatment. Therefore, the main concern that governs this research is centered in children and adolescents that are being labeled with false positive diagnoses of mental disorders and “treated” with drug interventions as if they had serious pathologies. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) was chosen as the main theme of study because it has a high prevalence in several countries. From this context, we established as the objective of this research to understand how social networks (virtual communities of Facebook) are used to convey biopolitical strategies, with the purpose of articulating the process of medicalization of childhood. The methodology used for the development of the research was virtual ethnography in a community of the social network Facebook. We consider that the information about ADHD disseminated in social networks, identified as educational, and added to the publicity, characterize a vulnerability of the virtual field that facilitates the articulation of the medicalization of childhood.
Keywords : Medicalization; Biopolitics; ADHD; Social Networks.