Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has achieved celebrity status in many Western countries, yet despite considerable effort to prove its existence as a «real» disorder, ADHD still suffers from a crisis of legitimacy. Nonetheless, diagnosis and prescription of medication has grown at a phenomenal rate since the late 1980s, particularly in Western culture. Numerous accounts exist explaining how the ADHD diagnosis functions as a convenient administrative loophole, providing schools with a medical explanation for school failure, medication to sedate the «problem» into submission, or the means to eject children from mainstream classrooms. This book provides a more holistic interpretation of how to respond to children who might otherwise be diagnosed with and medicated for «ADHD» - a diagnosis which, whether scientifically valid or not, is unhelpful within the confine of the school. Training teachers to recognise and identify «ADHD symptoms» or to understand the functions of restricted pharmaceuticals will only serve to increase the number of children diagnosed and the sale of psychoactive medications. Research has shown that such activities will not help those children learn, nor will it empower their classroom teachers to take responsibility for teaching such children well. This book seeks to provide school practitioners with knowledge that is useful within the educational context to improve the educational experiences and outcomes for children who might otherwise receive a diagnosis of ADHD.

Deconstructing ADHD: Mental Disorder or Social Construct? is the third volume of the Ethics International Press Critical Psychology and Critical Psychiatry Series. Understanding the current systems of psychology and psychiatry is profoundly important. So is exploring alternatives. The Critical Psychology and Critical Psychiatry Series presents solicited chapters from international experts on a wide variety of underexplored subjects. This is a series for mental health researchers, teachers, and practitioners, for parents and interested lay readers, and for anyone trying to make sense of anxiety, depression, and other emotional difficulties. Millions of children and their parents worldwide are affected by the current biomedical paradigm by which childhood mental illnesses are addressed. This volume focuses on the “mental disorder” known as ADHD and examines whether or not it should be considered a mental disorder, and how the observable behaviors that get a child an ADHD label can be remediated without the use of powerful gateway chemicals.

Within the context of the nation's changing demographic and cultural landscape, this one of a kind book brings together a national roster of leading practitioners and scholars who recommend innovative strategies for reducing racial and ethnic disparities that are pervasive across all fields of practice in the health and human services.

In this completely revised and updated edition, Deconstructing Developmental Psychology interrogates the assumptions and practices surrounding the psychology of child development, providing a critical evaluation of the role and contribution of developmental psychology within social practice. Since the second edition was published, there have been many major changes. This book addresses how shifts in advanced capitalism have produced new understandings of children, and a new (and more punitive) range of institutional responses to children. It engages with the paradoxes of childhood in an era when young adults are increasingly economically dependent on their families, and in a political context of heightened insecurity. The new edition includes an updated review of developments in psychological theory (in attachment, evolutionary psychology, theory of mind, cultural-historical approaches), as well as updating and reflecting upon the changed focus on fathers and fathering. It offers new perspectives on the connections between Piaget and Vygotsky and now connects much more closely with discussions from the sociology of childhood and critical educational research. Coverage has been expanded to include more material on child rights debates, and a new chapter addresses practice dilemmas around child protection, which engages even more with the "raced" and gendered effects of current policies involving children. This engaging and accessible text provides key resources to inform better professional practice in social work, education and health contexts. It offers critical insights into the politics and procedures that have shaped developmental psychological knowledge. It will be essential reading for anyone working with children, or concerned with policies around children and families. It was also be of interest to students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels across a range of professional and practitioner groups, as well as parents and policy makers.

In the second edition of this text, the authors critically examine the intellectual foundations of special education and consider the consequences on their influence for professional and popular thinking about learning difficulties.

"In this book the authors look behind special education to its supposed intellectual foundations. They find a knowledge jumble constructed of bits and pieces from Piagetian, psychoanalytic, psychometric and behavioural theoretical models. They examine the consequences of these models' influence for professional and popular thinking about learning difficulty. In turn, they explore and critique the results of this dominance for our views about children who are different and for the development of special education and its associated professions. In the light of this critique, they suggest that much of the 'knowledge' of special education is misconceived, and they proceed to advance a powerful rationale for inclusion out of ideas about stakeholding, social justice and human rights. Concluding that inclusion owes more to political theory than to psychology or sociology, the authors suggest that a rethink is needed about the ways in which we come by educational knowledge. This is important reading for students of education, and for teachers, advisers and educational psychologists."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Treating Huckleberry Finn offers a drug-free alternative to treating rambunctious children. Author David Nylund2s SMART approach is a five-step strategy to understanding, nourishing, and learning to control the millions of youngsters who have been unfairly branded with the diagnoses of attention deficit disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

A selection of international critiques on the role of ADHD in our society today, looking at how and why diagnoses have increased in recent years

Integrative Psychotherapy for Children and Adolescents with ADHD combines aspects of cognitive development theory with principles of psychodynamic psychotherapy. Dr. Sebastiano Santostefano presents specific procedures for what he calls cognitive control therapy to help children and adolescents whose learning dysfunctions are a source of school failure and serious adjustment problems. He offers a possible alternative to psychopharmacological treatment for those suffering from an underlying distractibility and low frustration tolerance. Santostefano suggests that many of these patients lack the cognitive structures necessary to change within verbally oriented psychotherapy.