Dislexia e TDAH em projetos de lei – em foco, a medicalização de crianças e adolescentes

Abstract

The medicalization of children and adolescents is sold as a necessary practise and endorsed by institutions, pharmaceuticals laboratories, schools and is admitted into the Legislative and Executive Powers, seeking regulations. The research, based on qualitative methodology, aimed to analyse Proposed Bills concerning dyslexia and the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children and adolescents looking for concepts about these disorders and analyse them from the Critical School Psychology perspective. For that, sought Proposed Bills about dyslexia and ADHD in Brazil from 2000 onwards in 27 websites of state Legislative Assemblies, besides the House of Representatives and the Senate’s websites. The delimitation were bills who had on their official titles the keywords “dyslexia” and “ADHD” and others official titles related to the subject, such as medicalization and learning disorders. In some States, like in the North Region and some in the North East region, the research didn’t occurred for Proposed Bills, but for Ordinary Proposed Bills. The finalization of the empirical material created a corpus with 216 Proposed Bills, which 159 were analyzed. The state Legislatives didn’t own an unified system, which complicated the searches in some States. It was found a pattern of repetitives Proposed Bills among States and even inside the same State, only differentiating the Bill submission period. São Paulo state Legislative was the only one that created a Proposed Bill about a day against the medicalization of education. All the others brazilian States, Senate and House of Representatives presents on theirs official titles tendencies for identification, diagnosis, creation of following up and treatment programs to dyslexia and ADHD without distinction between opposition and government parties. The elaborated material was analysed based on Content Analysis and the NVivo software. It was elected four axes analysis: 1) Dyslexia and ADHD conceptions and symptoms; 2) Proposals presented in the Proposed Bills; 3) Dyslexia, ADHD and introduction in Politics concerning People with Disabilities and 4) Timeline with political and historical landmarks that influenced the formulation of Proposed Bills. Through empirical material analysis, it was verified biologizing and medicalizing justifications about dyslexia and ADHD etiology in Bills; Proposed Bills agreeing with changes in educational policies in Brasil from 1990 onwards; attempts by legislators, consenting with discourses from the Brazilian Dyslexia Association and The Brazilian Association for Attention Deficit Disorder, to characterize these disorders as disabilities in order to validate social inclusion and rights guarantees. Finally, it was analysed how the rise of neoliberal socio-economic model involved medicalizing discourse and also surrounded the elaboration of legislative proposals. It is essencial Education Psychology dialogues with public policies, specially the elaboration and analysis of the political and social conjuncture connected to the Proposed Bills, because, when sanctioned, they are transformed into laws that will impact the daily education of children and adolescents and their life stories, who are not supposed to be marked by ADHD and dyslexia stigmas.