The control of childhood: ways of the medicalization

Abstract

This project intends to question the treatment based in medications designated to children diagnosed with Attention Déficit and Hyperactivity Disorders (ADHD), surching the basic suppositions that determinate it and developing a critical reflection about the psychiatric treatment basead in medicines as a form of violence against these children and as a form of control of their lives, and identifing it as biopower, according to the definition of this concept in Michel Foucault s theory. To achieve aim, we need to ask if ADHD is a disease and if it damages the child s physic, social and intellectual development, and if it can be cured to live a "normal" life. The medication as biopower does not only envolve the medical environment, but also legal aspects, the Constitutions, the Codes, the Declarations and the Statutes, which indicate the "more appropriate" forms of "how to live life". Because of that, I also propose the analisys of the Brazilian Legislation related to the mental health and, specially, the Child and Adolescent Statute, legal documents that present the interpretation and adjustment of the Human Rights in the brazilian reality, and approach how it deals with ADHD, directly and indirectly, and what are the consequences of this to the children diagnosed. (AU)