Is ADHD adaptive or non-adaptive behavior?


: The evolutionary approach to the issue of ADHD derives from the assumption that what is regarded as a pathological phenomenon today was once an adaptive response to the conditions of life in the ancestral stages of human development. The paper argues against this conception on the basis of the clinical picture of ADHD. The author believes that in the previous "natural" conditions the ADHD syndrome was even more of a maladaptation than in the "protective" conditions of present-day life.


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