From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily.

Over the past three decades, ADHD diagnoses in the United States have been climbing steadily,

and so have prescriptions for the medication to manage the symptoms.

But as the field booms, some longtime researchers are starting to question whether much of

the fundamental thinking around how we identify and treat the disorder is wrong.

Today, magazine contributor Paul Tuff explains.

Music planes. It's Tuesday, June 17.

Paul, welcome back to the Daily.

Thank you. Great to be here.

Paul, you recently wrote a story about ADHD that got a lot of people's attention, including here on the Daily. And it might be because ADHD and the medications to treat it are something that, frankly, I think a lot of people seem to have kind of a personal experience with, either themselves or people that they know. And so my first question to you is just how did you personally come to this

story? So, yeah, it's a lot like what you're describing. I have two boys, one who's 10 and one

who's 15, so they are both in the key ADHD demographic. And I think a few years ago,

I just started to have this sense that, like, ADHD was all around me, that every conversation

I was having with parents and with teachers, that this was a big part of what they were concerned

with and what they were trying to figure out. But it felt like there were a lot of puzzles in this

diagnosis that, on the one hand,

it seemed like something that was very clear and straightforward, like a friend would say,

yeah, we didn't know what was wrong, but then we found out it's ADHD. But at the same time,

it felt like the boundaries between what was ADHD and what was not ADHD were kind of fluid

and porous. And so I wanted to try to understand this disconnect.

And I figured the place to start was to talk to the scientists who study ADHD.

So when you started diving into this field, that it sounds like, seemed both everywhere,

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