The Prescription of a New Generation
Psychostimulant use in conjunction with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder raises important questions among today’s college students about health, fairness, and the development of a person’s identity, as well as safety, artificiality, and dependency. Analysis of students’ experiences with prescription stimulants like Ritalin at a university in the northeastern United States, presented a clearer picture of how and why students incorporate prescription medicine into their lives and identities, as well as the costs and benefits of the prescription of this generation.
online resources
media coverage
- The Rise (and Rise) of Viagra: Mother Jones interviews Meika Loe.
- Viagra: the hard sell: Coverage of Loe’s work by the BBC.
- Ritalian abuse: statistics, at pbs.org: Meika Loe highly recommendeds this as a teaching resource.
- NY Times: Brain Enhancement Is Wrong, Right?: An article in The New York Times about academics using Adderall and Provigil to improve their academic performance.
further research
- Adele E. Clarke, Janet K. Shim, Laura Mamo, Jennifer Ruth Fosket, and Jennifer R. Fishman studies contemporary context and working definitions for biomedicalization. Key Work: “Biomedicalization: Technoscientific Transformations of Health, Illness, and U.S. Biomedicine,” American Sociological Review 68 (2003): 161–194.
- Peter Conrad and Deborah Potter introduce and explore medical diagnostic expansion in the case of ADHD. Key Work: “From Hyperactive Children to ADHD Adults: Observations on the Expansion of Medical Categories,” Social Problems 47 (2000): 559–582.
- Richard DeGrandpre provides an early socio-cultural analysis of Ritalin use, and an argument about over-diagnosis. Key Work: Ritalin Nation: Rapid-Fire Culture and the Transformation of Human Consciousness, W.W. Norton & Company, 1999.
- David E. Karp provides a qualitative analysis exploring the relationship between medicine and identity. Key Work: Is it Me or My Meds? Living with Anti-Depressants, Harvard University Press, 2006.
- Adam Rafalovich examines physicians’ relationships to medical ambivalence and uncertainty in treating ADHD. Key Work: “Exploring Clinician Uncertainty in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder,” Sociology of Health and Illness 27 (2005): 305–323.
- Sean Esteban McCabe: Study: 7 percent of college students used prescription drugs as stimulants for non-medical purposes, January 6, 2005.
