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Relative Age Effect in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder at Various Stages of the Medicalization Process
Diagnosis and pharmacological treatment of ADHD are more common among the youngest children in a classroom, born in the months immediately preceding the school entry cutoff date. The mechanisms behind this phenomenon, called the relative age effect (RAE), are not yet well understood. Nearly all hypo...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9221667/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35740826 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/children9060889 |
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author | Brault, Marie-Christine Degroote, Emma Jean, Mireille Van Houtte, Mieke |
author_facet | Brault, Marie-Christine Degroote, Emma Jean, Mireille Van Houtte, Mieke |
author_sort | Brault, Marie-Christine |
collection | PubMed |
description | Diagnosis and pharmacological treatment of ADHD are more common among the youngest children in a classroom, born in the months immediately preceding the school entry cutoff date. The mechanisms behind this phenomenon, called the relative age effect (RAE), are not yet well understood. Nearly all hypotheses involve the school system, various teachers’ actions, and concern children’s immaturity. However, most previous studies have been based on reports of health professionals’ diagnoses and prescriptions found in official databases rather than on reports of teachers’ behavior identification or suspicion of ADHD, despite their being at the first stages of the medicalization process. Our study overcomes this limitation by using reports of parents’ and teachers’ behavior identification or suspicion of ADHD within a three-level multilevel survey design, comprising 1294 children, 130 teachers, and 17 elementary public schools. The goal of our study was to investigate whether RAE stems (1) from adults’ judgement of the child’s expression of immaturity or (2) from the consequences associated with the child’s double burden of being immature and exhibiting ADHD behaviors. Our multilevel analyses put forward the first hypothesis only, supporting the medicalization of immaturity. RAE in ADHD seems mostly initiated by teachers’ pre-diagnostic actions toward younger children. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9221667 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-92216672022-06-24 Relative Age Effect in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder at Various Stages of the Medicalization Process Brault, Marie-Christine Degroote, Emma Jean, Mireille Van Houtte, Mieke Children (Basel) Article Diagnosis and pharmacological treatment of ADHD are more common among the youngest children in a classroom, born in the months immediately preceding the school entry cutoff date. The mechanisms behind this phenomenon, called the relative age effect (RAE), are not yet well understood. Nearly all hypotheses involve the school system, various teachers’ actions, and concern children’s immaturity. However, most previous studies have been based on reports of health professionals’ diagnoses and prescriptions found in official databases rather than on reports of teachers’ behavior identification or suspicion of ADHD, despite their being at the first stages of the medicalization process. Our study overcomes this limitation by using reports of parents’ and teachers’ behavior identification or suspicion of ADHD within a three-level multilevel survey design, comprising 1294 children, 130 teachers, and 17 elementary public schools. The goal of our study was to investigate whether RAE stems (1) from adults’ judgement of the child’s expression of immaturity or (2) from the consequences associated with the child’s double burden of being immature and exhibiting ADHD behaviors. Our multilevel analyses put forward the first hypothesis only, supporting the medicalization of immaturity. RAE in ADHD seems mostly initiated by teachers’ pre-diagnostic actions toward younger children. MDPI 2022-06-15 /pmc/articles/PMC9221667/ /pubmed/35740826 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/children9060889 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Brault, Marie-Christine Degroote, Emma Jean, Mireille Van Houtte, Mieke Relative Age Effect in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder at Various Stages of the Medicalization Process |
title | Relative Age Effect in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder at Various Stages of the Medicalization Process |
title_full | Relative Age Effect in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder at Various Stages of the Medicalization Process |
title_fullStr | Relative Age Effect in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder at Various Stages of the Medicalization Process |
title_full_unstemmed | Relative Age Effect in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder at Various Stages of the Medicalization Process |
title_short | Relative Age Effect in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder at Various Stages of the Medicalization Process |
title_sort | relative age effect in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder at various stages of the medicalization process |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9221667/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35740826 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/children9060889 |
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