Infância diagnosticada: quando o transtorno nomeia a criança e (des)organiza a família

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the effects of diagnostic labeling in childhood, particularly with regard to the neurodevelopmental disorders described in the DSM-5, with emphasis on Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Based on interviews with caregivers, the study seeks to understand how the history of these diagnostic classifications influences the contemporary construction of perspectives on childhood, the ways in which psychological suffering is recognized, and the family dynamics shaped by specialized technical discourse. It is grounded in the understanding that the central role assumed by diagnoses in contemporary society cannot be analyzed in isolation but must instead be understood as part of a broader historical process of the medicalization of life. The findings indicate that the consolidation of modern psychiatry, particularly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries onward, was closely linked to the development of strategies for classifying and managing behaviors considered deviant, thereby producing a rationality based on the opposition between the normal and the pathological. Within this context, childhood became a privileged target of practices of surveillance, prevention, and intervention, especially through the articulation of medicine, education, and the family. In contemporary society, this logic has been intensified by the consolidation of neurodevelopmental disorders as the central axis of psychiatric classifications in childhood, supported by a predominantly neurobiological rationale. Furthermore, the widespread dissemination of these diagnoses extends beyond the strictly clinical domain, occupying a strategic position in organizing access to public policies, social rights, and specialized services. This scenario highlights the importance of examining the impacts produced by the expansion of psychiatric classifications on contemporary modes of constituting childhood.