Vreeling, Liselotte L.H. (2021) All over the Place? A contextualized and experiential perspective of ADHD. Master thesis.
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Abstract
While it is acknowledged that ADHD affects all aspects of life, existing ADHD-research is dominated by a psycho-medical discourse. This disregards context and invalidates ADHDers’ lived experiences, both in content as well as methodologically, resulting in an incomplete and stigmatized understanding of ADHD. Disability geography and neurodiversity have established the necessity of contextualized experiential perspectives in constituting a more holistic understanding of other body-mind differences, but have not yet provided such perspectives on ADHD. This thesis contributes to the destigmatization and a holistic neurodiversity-understanding of ADHD by exploring a contextualized and experiential perspective adopting a methodology suiting ADHDers’ ways of being, knowing, and doing. Data were collected through a negotiated qualitative approach, consisting of a pilot group interview, walking interviews, and participant-generated data. The study was conducted with eight participants living in the region of Groningen, The Netherlands. Four inextricably connected and continuously shifting themes that shape ADHDers’ experience of and interaction with environments were identified: the tendencies 1) openness, and 2) a constant pursuit of balancing stimulation; and the tactics 3) renegotiating environmental encounters, and 4) utilizing environmental encounters to renegotiate ADHD. The findings suggest that ADHD is a relational phenomenon that is not inherently negative nor positive, but manifested in the interaction between person and place, which can only be fully understood and valued through ADHDers’ experiences. Therefore, a reconceptualization of ADHD as an embodied process of being different rather than an inherent state of being deficient is proposed.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
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| Degree programme: | Spatial Sciences (Research) |
| Supervisor: | Hoven, B van |
| Date Deposited: | 01 Sep 2021 09:10 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Sep 2021 09:10 |
| URI: | https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/3687 |
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