If I were to point fingers at ADHD at all, I'd be more likely to mark it as an example of overzealous diagnosis of normal human variance than as a culturally-created disorder. At least in the relatively high-functioning cases.
(Are those stories of people with ADHD who are completely distracted by any arbitrary stimulus true? I've never heard of them closer than two or three degrees of separation from where I heard the story, and never a trustworthy source. Regardless, I don't mean those, hence "high-functioning")
Think about how well you'd behave if you lived your life trying to sort out the information you needed with three radio stations and five televisions all playing different things blaring at you all at once 24/7. That's kinda what it's like.
If you struggle, see about medication. I resisted for years. I was afraid it would take away the sparkle. Now, medication probably isn't for everyone, and some medications will not be for certain people, but let me tell you something: life works now. My apartment is clean; I know where my stuff is; I do better with relationships; I show up to meetings early; life doesn't feel like I'm constantly on the edge of imploding. And the sparkle is far from gone. I'm still the same person. I just feel like I can actually be that person without a wall of fog and noise to constantly battle through.
That's an interesting point. But this overzealous diagnosis is made (from what I see) essentially in the United States, which is where the disease was theorized.
Yes, over-diagnosing a particular disease that has no equivalent (in the same proportions) accross the Atlantic is clearly a cultural marker.
Add to that the existence of a medication industry that needs this disease to exist and you'll see why the cultural belief gets self-reinforced.
Medical knowledge has a normative effect on reality (we build knowledge over the experienced reality but the knowledge has then an effect over reality in the way it is read and shared): that's why in the right conditions, new diseases can be created through a scientific process.
A hundred years ago we treated female hysteria as a normal deasease, in ways that are now considered catastrophic and extremely machist. At the time, all doctors were men. Now we know this diagnosis is bullshit.
Medicine happens in society: in a particular social context in time and space. And we should bring the same distant look over our occidental medecine as over any other remote ("traditional", as we say) culture, like the ones in the article.
Hey, that's great! We can just ship all the ADHD sufferers over to Europe for a vacation, and they'll be cured! Or do you think it would take an extended stay? And be careful if you visit America, you might come down with it yourself!
Your link is about early childhood development and doesn't support the idea that any amount of time in Europe will change anything. A structured environment helps ADHD sufferers cope with symptoms, and quieter children (as the article claims French children are) are more likely to go undiagnosed, so a large part of the difference could be under-diagnosis. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/attention-deficit-hyp... The article also claims that stimulants are the "preferred" treatment in America but it gives no source for this claim. On the contrary, Wikipedia cites papers showing that behavioral treatments are preferred for young patients and for mild cases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_deficit_hyperactivit...
I think you should re-read the main article because you are completely missing the analogy here.
“Our ideas, our mindsets, and our beliefs feed back into the biology and change the biology in a way you can measure.”
+ are you missing the irony in my response to your ironic comment?
The point of the article I shared is that the classification of diseases in France does not include ADHD. Link that with the OP article and you'll see how the existence of a description of syndromes in the US can make these syndroms actually appear in patients.
(Are those stories of people with ADHD who are completely distracted by any arbitrary stimulus true? I've never heard of them closer than two or three degrees of separation from where I heard the story, and never a trustworthy source. Regardless, I don't mean those, hence "high-functioning")