Julie Allan discusses the trend of psychopathogisation, where certain behaviours by children are being judged as evidence of mental disorders and used to justify an official diagnosis which may be treated with drugs. This detracts from considerations of what is best, educationally for individual children and encourages a reliance on definitions of mental disorder to account for childhood normality or abnormality. She also talks about the efforts being made to resist diagnosing children with ADHD or other behaviour disorders.
Read the full article Problem behaviour in children is not always a mental disorder
Julie Allan and Valerie Harwood also discuss this new trend in their new book Psychopathology at School
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