Dr. Bruce Cohen is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Auckland. His career spans over thirty years where he has time and again used empirical research to tackle the numerous shortcomings of the psy-disciplines. With his upcoming book series, The Politics of Mental Health and Illness, he continues to expose how the psychiatric discourse “doesn’t work for us” but instead greases the wheels of a neoliberal capitalist society.
Bruce Cohen - [The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders\ is a fascinating document; DSM-III had things like “inattention caused by failing to finish things he or she starts, often not listening, easily distracted, having difficulty concentrating on school work, has difficulty staying seated, difficulty sticking to a play activity.” These are all things directly related to the classroom.
But then it moves into the adult world of work—the person will make careless mistakes at work or during other activities as well, they miss or they overlook details, their work is inaccurate. We have seen that one of the problems for capitalism has been the active worker disengagement—absenteeism or sickness. In the latest version of ADHD, and quite blatantly, they have just added lots of stuff to make it about your occupation as well. Now they have added poor time management, fails to meet deadlines at work. These are all symptoms of mental disorder. So, if you are not paying your bills on time, you are not keeping appointments, you could have ADHD.
Peter Conrad has talked about the modern form of ADHD as the medicalization of underproductivity. For example, at the university, one regularly gets requests for student extensions and the related mental health issue is often ADHD. In academia we have a mountain of work and I had a colleague who has a reflective critical attitude towards mental health system, but was actually relieved to get the diagnosis of ADHD. They could now access Adderall or Ritalin and perform more, which is of course the major component of Adderall or Ritalin. These are not mental illnesses per se, but they are actually issues of performance in neoliberal environment.
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