Maldonado MM, Camargo Jr KR. The ADHD epidemic: medicalization, the market, and the expansion of psychiatric diagnoses. Interface (Botucatu). 2025; 29: e250144 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1590/interface.250144
Abstracts
This study analyzes the diagnostic expansion of ADHD in the context of the medical-industrial and financial complex, highlighting contemporary medicalization and its economic and social engines. It explores how diagnostic elasticity, driven by DSM editions and by players such as the pharmaceutical industry, biomedical technologies, and the managed care model, has expanded diagnostic categories and social medicalization. Based on theoretical references and epidemiological data, the study discusses how these dynamics have made ADHD become one of the most diagnosed conditions. The findings indicate that hypermedicalization results from the interrelationship of various players (including the state), whose unequal forces influence the definition and expansion of mental disorders. The conclusion is that understanding these dynamics is essential to promoting care practices that prioritize unique needs and tackle health access inequalities.
Keywords
ADHD; Adult ADHD; DSM; Medicalization; Medical-industrial complex
Access in: https://doi.org/10.1590/interface.250144
