The past hundred years have been lauded for the discovery of countless life-saving treatments for a plethora of ailments, that were considered fatal not long ago. However, for every disease such as polio and malaria that we’ve eradicated, we’ve also developed treatments for seemingly trivial conditions, where there is often little known biological basis to call it an illness. In today’s age when any small eccentricity has a formal definition and associated medical treatment, medical diagnoses end up getting made as a result of a deviation from society’s expectations and human-constructed ideas, rather than in a strict biological context. Society uses medicine as a way to shape and define its own ideals, and as a method to conform people who …show more content…
The claim that such disorder existed was not readily adopted in the medical community due to a lack of objective evidence, yet the first ADHD drug was released in 1936, over thirty years before it was recognized in any medical setting {http://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/history#19524}. The idea that certain kids were innately insubordinate became legitimized with ADHD’s recognition in a medical setting, even though medical evidence for ADHD was tenuous and disputed. This essentially gives leeway for parents, educators, and kids themselves later on to espouse a certain set of characteristics, or excuse themselves from certain responsibilities because they received this “designation”. Psychologist Fred Baughman reinforces this idea, by saying that doctors have essentially told parents that “we’ll relieve you of [any] guilt” for being an inadequate parent by applying this label to your child and prescribing them psychotropic medication. By diagnosing a child with ADHD, all parties are exonerating themselves of responsibility, because any side-effect of having said disorder has now become an immutable part of nature, rather than something that can be actively