MEDICALIZATION OF ACADEMIC TROUBLES: THE CASE OF PSYCHOSTIMULANT MEDICATION USE AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

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Ertubay_Mert_MS_Thesis.pdf

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2022-9

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Ertubay, Mert

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Psychostimulant medications which are normally used in the treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder have been receiving increased academic attention. The existing literature has been focused on explaining the growing psychostimulant use as a function of increasing ADHD diagnoses from the lens of medicalization; as well as exploring the illicit usage of these medications for purposes of performance enhancement, from a health and ethics perspective. Both these approaches fail to represent the complex relationships individuals build with their academic troubles, ADHD diagnoses, and psychostimulant medication use. By shifting the focus to the lived experiences of individuals, this study aims to contextualize performance as it relates to the recognition of academic troubles. The main research question is “How do university students from two high ranking universities in Turkey experience the use of psychostimulant medications as a response to the everyday and academic troubles they encounter?”. Through data that was collected from 15 in-depth interviews with students from Middle East Technical University and Boğaziçi University, qualitative analysis was realized around Emerson’s (1977) conceptualization of “trouble”. The analysis is organized around two themes: i) Initiation to ADHD and Psychostimulant Use, which explores the ways in which students become introduced to the category of ADHD and psychostimulant medications after attempting to formulate intrinsic/informal responses to the troubles they are experiencing, and ii) Strategies for Ensuring Continual Use, which focuses on the processes that unfold after extrinsic/official responses have been applied to the trouble that is experienced.

Subject Keywords

medicalization, psychostimulant medications, ADHD, higher education, performance

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https://hdl.handle.net/11511/99451

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Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats

M. Ertubay, “MEDICALIZATION OF ACADEMIC TROUBLES: THE CASE OF PSYCHOSTIMULANT MEDICATION USE AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2022.