Mattias flygare och hans kamrater : Diagnos eller inte? En vetenskaplig essä om Adhd och dess likheter med symtomen kring stress

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this essay is to raise and discuss children’s problems with concentration in two areas, stress and Adhd, where the symptoms are similar to each other. During recent years I have experienced how "difficult" children increasingly have been diagnosed and "stamped" with various combinations of letters. Because of my own children’s diagnoses, this has raised my interest in studying children´s modes of expression and behavior, and I have come to question whether many children who receive a diagnosis of Adhd really are afflicted by it. During my thirty years in pre-school I have seen an increase in such investigations, and how educators/staff in pre-school more often than before have asked the question of possible Adhd-problems as the underlying cause for deficiencies in impulse control, high activity level and difficulty with concentration. My experience of children, with these difficulties, as well as the stress-related diseases of my colleagues, has raised some problematic issues with Adhd diagnoses and I have discovered and experienced similarities between stress and Adhd on multiple planes. In this essay I have discussed that the symptoms of stress and the criteria for Adhd are strikingly similar, and I have reflected on the possibilities of falsely diagnosing Adhd in stressed children. Moreover, I have argued that our approach to these issues – especially the way in which such diagnoses are produced - has a major impact on the lives of the children that are affected – both in pre-school and in their later development.