![]() The same goes for ‘prevalence, trends and variations in ADHD diagnosis and medication’. As for the background text under the heading ‘Diagnosing ADHD’ and ‘ADHD treatment’ we have used well known, often cited texts on these topics. The search term ‘ADHD’, unsurprisingly, generated numerous hits on search engines such as Google scholar. We searched for research on ADHD in social work and the social sciences, but also more broadly on ADHD in general. Our ambition with this article is to contribute to theoretical and methodological debates on ADHD from a social work and social science perspective, and to call attention to the need of more comparative research in this field. Along the way, we highlight important research opportunities for social work researchers and conclude with some recommendations for further work. Our main focus is on social work with children and youth with ADHD, but, as we see it, social work researchers should also view ADHD in its broader context, including rising prevalence rates, individualisation of complex social problems (Conrad, Citation1975) and the strong co-morbidity between ADHD and other conditions. We devote considerable space to the challenges of setting diagnosis, the geographical pattering of the condition as well as social correlates of diagnosis and medication. Then follows a section where we outline research on the nature, diagnosis and treatment of ADHD. The article begins with a short presentation of how we have chosen the literature that underlies our claims in the article. Reducing such a complex phenomenon as ADHD to an individual pathology caused by deficits in neurological functioning will hardly help the young clients in child welfare whose situations often are characterised by layers of layers of social adversity. As we see it, the need for social research is immense precisely because of these processes. As social work researchers we should not shy away from conducting research on ADHD despite processes of increasing medicalisation (Conrad & Bergey, Citation2014) and pharmaceuticalisation (Abraham, Citation2010) in this and adjacent fields. For example, ADHD diagnosis and medication are clearly linked to different forms of social adversity. ![]() ![]() There are important lessons to be learnt from research with a social science orientation. To substantiate our claims, we draw primarily on general social science research on ADHD and on social work research on ADHD and certain recent findings from our own research (Karlsson & Lundström, Citation2015 Lundström, Citation2016). The links between ADHD and other diagnoses such as conduct disorder and oppositional deficiency disorder is another case in point. We believe that this statistical fact is in itself sufficient to alert social work researchers to why they should engage more in this issue. The prevalence of ADHD is very high in child welfare populations as compared to the general youth population. Our main message is simple: the social work profession should take an active part in discussions and research on how to approach and understand the phenomenon. Instead, research is dominated by medicine, which can be seen as part of a process of medicalisation of social problems (Conrad & Bergey, Citation2014). Our impression is that ADHD has not really been a major issue of concern for social work researchers. highly cited) social work studies on ADHD. When looking for research literature, we were surprised to learn that there are relatively few influential (e.g. This article discusses the link between ADHD, social work research and social work practice with children and adolescents. The core features of the condition are inattention, impulsiveness and hyperactivity (e.g. ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) is probably the fastest growing psychiatric diagnosis among young people in general and looked after children in particular.
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