One needs to take into consideration that if a child is under a considerable amount of social stress for an extended period of time, they will suffer from biological problems. In short, these symptoms are to neurobehavioral disorders as a fever is to other illnesses. For example, if someone has the flu and you simply apply a cold compress to reduce the fever, you are only masking the problem, not solving it. Instead, you need to find the cause of the fever, for example, the flu, and cure that. Likewise, you can not "cure" A.D.D. by masking the problem and giving the child a pill to make them calm, you need to find the cause, which is within the system, and cure that.
If you compare A.D.D. to other psychological disorders, you will again notice some undeniable differences. Psychological disorders are basically problems with one's thought patterns. However, paying attention is not an example of one's thought processes, but instead is a learned skill. The ability to follow directions is not innate, nor is it natural for children to be able to sit in a chair and be still for hours. Instead, these are learned skills that must be acquired in the home or school. If the problem was within the child's thought patterns, then it could be said that their thought patterns, and therefore the problem, would accompany them in every given context. However, unlike serious psychological illnesses such as schizophrenia, the symptoms of A.D.D. tend to come and go in many children. For instance, children with ADD often do not have a problem sitting still in front of the television for hours at a time, and many of them don't have as much trouble paying attention when they are talking with only one person. Because A.D.D. is not a problem with one's thought processes and is not consistent throughout all contexts, it can not be considered a psychological problem.
The wide-spread diagnosis of A.D.D. in America's youth cannot be considered a biological or psychological problem, but instead a sociological problem at heart.
