Optimering af en psykisk lidelse: ADHD, hjernetræning og skævvredne forventninger i New York City

This article will shed light on the disadvantages of an American discourse where mental disorders are framed as potential assets. The purpose is to illustrate the discrepancy between the ways adults with ADHD experience ADHD in their daily lives and the emergent discursive, positive interpretation of ADHD. The article will demonstrate how adults with ADHD attempt to improve themselves by initiating optimizing practices such as brain training (neurofeedback) and medication. The positive interpretation of ADHD is influenced by an increasing demand for productivity and a moral imperative on self-responsibility in the American society. Neoliberalism is not the main focus in the article. Yet, the neoliberal rationale claiming that individuals are responsible for themselves works as contextual framework. Based on Durkheim’s analytical figure, the anomic suicide, the article depicts how the positive interpretation of ADHD and the optimization pressure can place the individual in an endless race towards unattainable goals rather than strengthening the individual. This can create great strain and self-reproach on the person with ADHD beside skewed expectations. The article suggests that a significant group of adults with ADHD experience ADHD as “a gift they would rather not want”. It is based on field studies in New York City in 2011.