The growing problem called 'ADHD'

So, are teachers responsible for the increase in ADHD diagnosis? Let’s exercise the same caution that we did in the doctor’s office and take another step back to look more closely at the scene of the school.

Teachers are currently being asked to teach to diversity with one hand tied behind their backs. Over the same 15-year period that “hyperactivity” has become part of our common lexicon, education systems have recognised the need for schools to become more inclusive institutions.

Our teachers are now teaching children who would never previously have entered the gates of the local school. For this, they should be commended. Instead, they are insulted with talk of “performance pay”.

Note however that in those same 15 years, public schooling in Australia has also experienced the effects of harsh neo-liberal reforms. Public services such as education and health have been asked to do much more with much less.

Here in Queensland, we have seen what happens when you strip hospital systems of funding. The increase in ADHD diagnosis in Australia is one telling symptom of what happens when you abandon public education: a growing number of children lose out as under-resourced schools and teachers are forced into a funding play-off.

While schools offer learning support services, many children miss out because of the way their difficulties in school are described. In Queensland, a child whose difficulties are described in ADHD diagnostic nomenclature does not qualify for meaningful support. For these children, systems rely on teachers to plug a widening gap. The load is lessened when difficult children are diagnosed with something that qualifies for support funding or when parents oblige the school by shifting the problem to their local pediatrician. Often, the result is a prescription for stimulant medication.

This is a band-aid solution. But … a cheap one!

When Health Minister Tony Abbott announced the inclusion of Ritalin on the PBS, it was described as a “choice” initiative. Parents could now “choose” between brands of stimulant medication for their hyperactive, distractive, impulsive children.

What Abbott neglected to consider is what little choice parents actually have. In reality, parents cannot influence their child’s behaviour beyond the school gate in any other way. Nor can they influence what is happening in the classroom. If teachers are struggling with a range of diverse learning styles and abilities in a class of 30 seven-year-olds, yet being judged by the performance of their students in benchmark tests, then they are forced to seek support by other means.

Support, however, is tied to disability categories. On the ground, this means that teachers are being forced to seek diagnoses for children on the margins. Some children have difficulties that qualify for meaningful support. Many fall out of those neat little boxes - bright, intelligent, forgetful, inquisitive, disruptive children who require more redirection, more explanation, more repetition, more time, more energy, more help.

These are the children who end up in pediatrician’s offices. These are the children whose parents will learn to speak the lexicon of ADHD.

In this way, an ADHD diagnosis functions as an “escape clause”, so society can keep pretending traditional schooling methods and structures are working. Through such a narrow lens, the problem is the child and never the system.