Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD, is a common childhood disorder characterized by the inability to focus on a task for a significant period of time. It may also be marked by extreme activity levels that are outside the norm for a child's age. ADHD has the reputation of being over diagnosed; doctors should use a strict set of criteria and information from many sources before making a formal diagnosis.
Questionnaires
Because ADHD is most often noticed in home and school settings, and the diagnostic criteria require that symptoms be present in more than one setting, parent and teacher questionnaires are a primary diagnostic tool. Many young children behave very differently depending upon their environment. If the home is fairly unstructured or chaotic, the child may exhibit ADHD-like behaviors but have no trouble focusing or behaving appropriately in the more structured school environment. Since doctors normally see patients only for a brief period of time, and often under stressful conditions such as illness or anxiety, they can develop a skewed impression of the child. Parent and teacher questionnaires help doctors get a more in-depth picture of the child's behavior patterns over time, as seen by the people who know the child best.
Developmental And Psychological Exam
Symptoms of ADHD can also be attributed to a number of other childhood disorders, including sensory processing disorder and childhood depression. To rule out these and other disorders, a multidisciplinary team should perform a full developmental, psychological, nutritional, and psychosocial examination. Evaluating the child from a number of perspectives helps rule out other disorders and gives the child's pediatrician a better understanding of the complex combination of symptoms and behaviors that any given child exhibits.
Often, the parents and siblings of the child being evaluated will be asked to undergo a psychological evaluation as well. This is to rule out any significant stressors and upheavals that could account for the child's behavior problems. Young children cope with stressful situations ,such as a new baby, moving, or the death of a loved one, differently than adults. Many of the coping behaviors that are natural for young children are similar to ADHD symptoms.
Cutting Edge Diagnostics
One of the major problems in diagnosing ADHD is subjectivity. In many cases, a child who is bouncing off the walls and refusing to comply with parents' or teachers' instructions will be brought to the pediatrician for an ADHD diagnosis, when the root causes of the behavior problems are most likely nutritional deficiencies, lack of structure, or reactions to stress. On the other hand, many children who do have ADHD are not diagnosed because they do not exhibit manic, hyperactive behavior.
The University of Sydney has announced a new computer-based diagnostic tool called IntegNeuro. According to preliminary studies, the tool was able to correctly identify people with ADHD with 96 percent accuracy. Further studies must be done to identify the clinical usefulness of IngegNeuro, but in the future it could drastically reduce the misdiagnosis of ADHD.
