The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.
Gitte holds a PhD in medical anthropology and is a former psychiatric nurse. Her research concerns mental health and family life and explores connections between time and ADHD from an everyday family perspective. She draws on long-term fieldwork conducted in Danish families.
What is your article “”I Do not have ADHD When I Drive My Truck” Exploring the Temporal Dynamics of ADHD as a Lived Experience” about?
Co-written with Per Hove Thomsen, Sanne Lemcke, and Rikke Sand Andersen, this paper explores cases where interlocutors make use of space—such as a truck, a horse stable, or a space capsule/flat—as a strategy for balancing ADHD symptoms. Methodologically, the article draws on Stevenson´s concept “imagistic thinking” as a way to approach creative sides of managing ADHD. The main contribution of the paper is the concept of “own-time spaces”: personal spaces driven by dreams and desires and characterized by rhythm. In own-time spaces, ADHD symptoms fade into the background. The article adds to the existing understanding of shielding as a pedagogical strategy in coping with ADHD. Own-time spaces are more than concrete shields; they are personal, dynamic, and imagistic spaces that reflect a lifetime perspective, such as for example childhood dreams. Put simply, attending to own-time spaces is a strategy for regulating ADHD-experiences and thereby reduce ADHD symptoms
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests.
As both a medical anthropologist and psychiatric nurse, I seek to explore the entanglements between
biological and social experiences and explanations of living with ADHD. I approach this through the lens of time. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and conceptualizing ADHD as a bio-chrono-social condition, my research unfolds the temporal entanglements of ADHD in bodies and families.
What drew you to this project?
A concrete empirical case kickstarted the idea of writing this article.
I have known Kenny for 15 years, first as my patient, and now as a research participant. Kenny is diagnosed with a severe degree of ADHD and has always been obsessed with trucks. Ever since he was a kid, he told me that his ADHD disappears when he is in a truck. Now, when an adult, the same counts; he still tells me that his ADHD disappears when he drives his truck. Kenny´s experiences of ADHD as a condition that fluctuates contrasted with my primary understanding of ADHD a highly biological condition. This contradiction has been my main motivation to write this article. I invited a team of cross-disciplinary co-authors from anthropology and psychiatry because I wanted the article to explore this mystery in the broadest possible sense
What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now? (Doesn’t have to be anthropological!)
I defended my PhD dissertation three weeks ago, so right now I’m enjoying some downtime by watching a popular Netflix series called Sirenes.
If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?
One key takeaway is that ADHD is a dynamic condition deeply entangled with time and space. People
actively engage in various forms of ‘time-work’ to manage their experiences and symptoms. Recognizing
these strategies can help us better understand ADHD beyond purely biomedical or social constructionist
frameworks.
Other places to connect:
Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 