Neurotechnology Goes to Polish School. An Ethnographic Story About Scanning ADHD

Abstract

In a public primary school in a middle sized Polish town, research was conducted in which a number of children were diagnosed with a new tool for identifying ADHD. This situation serves as the point of departure for an ethnographic reflection devoted to contemporary practices of diagnosing children’s mental health. The screening programs, which are more frequently permeating Polish schools, generate a category of “patients-in-waiting”, who can be defined as children, who remain in an intermediate position between illness and normalcy. It is they who are the potential recipients of further diagnostic acts and therapies and they co-constitute a dynamically developing area of neuroeconomy.