Attention

Children with psychiatric diagnoses such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder/attention-deficit disorder and autism spectrum disorder have often been the topic of heated debate between those who favour the view that the global increase in children who receive these diagnoses is the result of pathologizing and stigmatizing discourses and those who favour the view that attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder are neurodevelopmental disabilities. This conflict leaves the field divided with regard to which educational strategies teachers and education workers should use with these children in mainstream educational contexts. The core of the problem is the extent to which such diagnoses may be considered a help or stigma in the ongoing quest to include these children in state schools on the same footing as every other child. This article approaches this dilemma from a different theoretical standpoint than those that have guided criticism of psychiatric diagnoses since the rise of anti-psychiatry. The consequence of this theoretical standpoint is that both the idea of the relationship between diagnoses and stigma, and the concept of stigma itself, must be altered when seeking to provide fruitful educational strategies for these children in mainstream educational settings such as state schools