The inadequacy of ADHD: a philosophical contribution

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a widely spread diagnosis.
The dominant paradigm of ADHD is biomedical where ADHD is
defined as a brain disorder. At the same time, the legitimacy of the
diagnosis is being questioned since it is unclear whether or not ADHD
can be deemed a medical disorder in itself. The aim of this article is to
critically assess the merits of understanding the diagnosis of ADHD as a
medical condition defined as a brain disorder. This is being done using
the seventeenth century philosopher Benedict Spinoza’s (1632–1677)
notions of adequate and inadequate knowledge and his counterintuitive
theory of mental health. Doing so it becomes clear that ADHD, however
adequate it may seem, is founded on inadequate knowledge and that
the legitimacy of the individual diagnosis should therefore be questioned
on the grounds that on a long term scale it is passivizing and
stigmatizing rather that liberating.