From Looping to Rippling: Mothers, Diagnostic Expansion, and ADHD in Israeli Families of Diagnosed Children
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: We examine diagnostic expansion of ADHD in Israel, based on interviews with mothers who came to identify with the ADHD label after their children were diagnosed. Applying a feminist psychiatric disability perspective, we show that diagnoses reverberate in families and raise unexpected stakes, meanings, and possibilities for mothers. In particular, women's social role as mothers is central to a sense of "failure" that they associate with ADHD, as well as a main site of self-cultivation, experimentation, and change. Diagnostic expansion is thus an open-ended and relational process, implicating multiple dimensions of self over the life course.
Source: Medical Anthropology
Authors: Talia Fried, Galia Plotkin-Amrami
Institution: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Language: English
Topic: Psychology and Mental Health
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Funder: Israel Science Foundation
Award: G1058871314
OpenAlex ID: W4416027144