Between rational use and magic: methylphenidate consumption, ADHD and schools

• Autor(a) principal: Mazon, Marcia da Silva
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Outros Autores: Tholl, James
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Política & Sociedade (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/politica/article/view/91454

The article proposes to approach the consumption of methylphenidate for ADHD in the school space from the reflections of Bourdieu and Foucault. The issue of increased consumption of methylphenidate for ADHD is considered exemplary in the challenge of the limits of rational use of medicines. Although the intensification of the medicalization of the school environment is recent, Foucault ponders how the very diffusion of psychiatric power is based on the school/hospital, health system/school system binomial. We are interested in understanding the most recent momentum of the pharmaceutical industry, which sells a good, according to Bourdieu, which is a symbolic good: the discourse that puts it in circulation is the discourse of the denial of profit from an exercise of enchantment . We show how this discourse reaches the school from the idea of the teacher's right to a “quiet room” as well as its effect appears expressed in the speech of teachers as “magic”.