Stolen Focus By Johann Hari Thoughts #3

So Society Did Give Me ADHD…Maybe…

So, dear readers, if you would like to look at my personal context post to get where the subtitle of this one came from, the link to it will be here.

As one can be sometimes, I was incredibly indecisive when it came to which chapter I would read for this blog post. In spite of the author’s many controversies, I feel like Hari was making a lot of good points and admittedly, further encouraging my pre-established biases on ways to help the world and what was wrong with it (for the most part). I decided to go above and beyond and indulge though, so I read chapters 10, 13, and 14, which focused on the increased stress in the world, the over-medicating of children with ADHD, and the lack of ability for children to be independent and play contributing to society’s decline of focus. I initially was unable to come up with any ideas for my final paper, but now I honestly have too many. I could see myself in the children discussed so frequently within these three chapters, as a neurodivergent child who grew up in a less than stellar household environment and who was incredibly sheltered (I was unable to leave the house on my own in one of the towns my parents lived in until I was 13, with the caveat that I could if I was with friends. I really struggled to make friends that lasted growing up, so in turn, I rarely went out alone).

Especially in Chapter 10, I reflected on the fact that both my parents and myself grew up in very unstable and toxic environments with families who were under intense circumstances, and that instead of perhaps a genetic inheritance that led to all of us having ADHD, it maybe could have been generational trauma passed down and inherited instead that caused it to manifest. I was lucky to go to a non-traditional high school for most of my high school years, a performing arts high school in Hartford, Connecticut. While it wasn’t nearly as progressive in its educational practices and structure as the schools mentioned in Chapter 14, the books we read and the personalities of many of our teachers and the personal knowledge they would impart on us as well as what was accepted there in regards to identity and expression definitely impacted me for the better I believe as a person, even though it being not the most academically acclaimed or challenging may have limited my college options.

It’s a shame many of these alternative schools are limited to those who are within the upper echelons of society due to high costs, when those within the working poor probably need it just as much, if not more, as Hari mentions the continued destruction of the middle class taking place leading to middle class and poor families putting their children in more stressful circumstances leading to perhaps more hypervigilant kids and more ADHD-like symptoms. The vicious cycle will continue if we continue to put the solutions behind unrealistic paywalls.