Browsing by Subject "mediaesitykset"

We are living a time of many kinds of diagnoses. It is suggested by social scientists that in a modern world ADHD is a typical way of describing the ways of being and acting. ADHD has traditionally been linked to childhood, but in the fifth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Man-ual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), which was released in 2013, ADHD has been acknowl-edged also as a disorder of adults. This may have an effect on the increasing public conver-sation about adult ADHD. Often the conversation about ADHD has a psychological and med-ical tone. Furthermore, different kinds of views that come from therapeutic culture are popu-lar in our society. There is a decent amount of studies about media representations of ADHD but it seems that there are not many studies about representations of adult ADHD in media. In Finland media has portrayed some adults that have been given an ADHD-diagnosis. There-fore I became interested to study how ADHD in adulthood is portrayed in Finnish media. My purpose was to study what kind of discourses are used to portray ADHD in adults. I also ex-amined the positions the media offers to adults with ADHD. The research data consists of eight (8) newspaper articles that are published in Helsingin Sanomat newspaper. The articles were chosen with the criterion that they portray a profile of an adult with ADHD-diagnosis and that the articles mainly concentrate on ADHD. As another criterion I decided that the articles should be published between the years of 2007 and 2017. In the study I applied the approach of discourse analysis. Four discourses were raised from the research data: ”ADHD as a real medically valid and identifiable disorder”, ”Survival with the help of ADHD-diagnosis”, ”ADHD as a risk factor” and ”Strengths and hopefulness”. I interpreted the first two discourses as the strongest ones. The first discourse validated ADHD as a disorder that can be medically diagnosed and it highlight-ed ADHD as having an effect on life. For the adult this discourse offered the position of a pa-tient and the position of a marginalized person. The second discourse portrayed a narrative about survival with ADHD-diagnosis. It offered the position of a survivor and the position of a victim. In this discourse ADHD-diagnosis and medication were portrayed as very important factors for the individual as the adult survives from difficulties with the help of them. The third discourse talked about ADHD through risks and it portrayed ADHD as a risk factor. It offered adults the position of a risky person and the position of a person that is susceptible to risks. The fourth discourse consisted of a more positive tone than the other discourses: the symp-toms of ADHD were portrayed as strengths and living with ADHD was described in a hopeful way. It offered the adult a position of a person who goes on in life with a positive attitude. The study showed that psychological and therapeutic ways of speaking were reflected in the arti-cles that were examined. ADHD-diagnosis was a central part of the media representations. A popular feature in the media representations was that ADHD-diagnosis was presented as an important factor for the wellbeing of the adult.