Att vara ung och leva med diagnosen ADHD. En kvalitativ intervjustudie med fokus på sociala och existentiella aspekter

Today many children and youths are allocated to “The Swedish Authority of Child and Youth Psychiatry (BUP) for the sake of being investigated by means of a neuropsychiatric inquire and many of which are assigned the diagnosis ADHD. During recent years “The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare” has declared, in it’s annual account of the current psychiatric state of Swedish Children and Youths, that the healthcare provided for those with neuropsychiatric diagnoses – such as Asperger syndrome and ADHD, has increased. ADHD is short for Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which implies neuropsychiatric impediments i.e. hyper activity, inadvertence and an inability to control impulses. The aim of the Study is to describe and analyze how youth, in the age range of sixteen to eighteen years of age, diagnosed with ADHD define themselves, their daily life, their social state, their next to kin relationships and, finally, their concept of their future. The Study is qualitative. It is constructed by means of a set of interviews. The participants are six youths in the age range of sixteen to eighteen years of age. The Study demonstrates that the youth’s daily life is dominated by the symptoms included within the diagnosis of ADHD. The state of affairs in school is the habitat in which the symptoms of ADHD are the most prominent, strenuous and uncompromising. Hence, the youths` wishes are that the education, taking place from the very beginning i.e. primary school, would have been conducted on an individual level and that the teachers would have been able to accommodate their impediments with greater care. While as their concurrent life habitat, overall, had been dominated by a prosperous social life with friends and hobbies. The diagnosis has provided an explanation and an opportunity to be provided aid. The youths claim a strong attachment to their families. They experience love and assurance within their families and have always felt their parents’ never ceasing support. As a whole, they all define an anticipation to have moved away from their parents and to have required a vacancy on the labor market. Yet several of the investigations conducted by the Swedish government indicates that the majority of youth, that has been granted “activity allowance” (i.e. a preliminary pension) and are in the age ranged between nineteen to twenty-nine years of age, 75 % did have a psychiatric diagnosis. One has to bear in mind that many of these diagnoses, fifteen to twenty years back, were more of less unheard-of – such as Asperger syndrome and the ADHD. What this implies is: when larger and larger numbers of youths with psychiatric diagnoses arises in our society we face the challenges to find a solution - which advocates this particular group’s possibilities of managing primary school, secondary school and the bridge between school and the labor market – so that, ultimately, they can earn a living independently