Over the years healthcare professionals have worked hard to bring some science into the diagnosis of Hyperactivity…You know that diagnosing AD-HD is as much an art as it is a science but look what they came up with.

Questionnaires!

Questionnaires have been created which allow educators and parents to rate the behaviours of the child. Guess who came up with the questionnaires? If you guessed The American Psychiatric Association – (APA) you are spot on!

They decided (just as they decided that Hyperactivity should be a dis-ease via a show of hands) that a questionnaire with a list of diagnostic standard should clarify the condition. So working together with psychologist, a ‘far reaching’ register of questions were put to paper.

Recently more exact assessments have been devised to measure attention and persistence. Can you imagine for a second if they could test for procrastination? We would all be Homo Procrastinapiens! (Instead of Homo Sapiens, the scientific name of the human race) But that is besides the point.

Out of all the jumble, there remains no one analysis that is 100% accurate…why is that? You know the answer, because of the vagueness of the signs, add to that mix variability, inconsistency and you have on your hands an unstructured mass of criteria’s that can fit most any body.

Having said that, the current assessment tools do shed some light on the Attention Deficit Disorder situation. Although they don’t always give a successful diagnosis you often find that the tests uncover some other related problem which may be contributing to the kid’s Attention Deficit Disorder - (Add) behaviour.

Let’s get stuck into Questionnaires.

Parents and mentors can complete questionnaires which score specific ADHD behaviours – the higher the score the worst the prognosis. It is totally the opposite from our education system. If you score high, that is bad and it means you are more likely to have AD/DD.

Among the most commonly used questionnaires are the Conners Teachers and Parent Rating Scale, the Achenbach Child Behaviour Checklist, the Edelbrock Child Attention Problem Rating Scale and the Barkley and DuPaul Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (Adhd) Rating Scale.

I won’t bother with the APA’s Attention Deficit Disorder - (Add) definition, we have been through them before. If you really would like to review them (which I doubt you would) here is a short list.

Attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity.

ADD with inattentiveness

ADHD combined

A word of caution. Please don’t get caught up in the diagnosis. As you can probably tell, the guidelines are vague and the main reason we are going through this exercise is to gain an understanding about what to look for.

Next on the list of ‘objective tool’, psychometric tests and profiles.

This is an interesting area. It is believed that each Hyperactivity young adolescent should be subjected to a barrage of analyses. The sequence goes like this, first we test out their intelligence by giving them a standard IQ test. This is followed by more specialized tests like reading, writing, spelling, maths and language.

It becomes apparent that trying to administer so many tests becomes a ridiculous burden for the family and young child. During the tests, the psychologist will comment that the young child is restless, inattentive and hard to keep working at the task.

Hmm…perhaps if the psychologist was subjected to the same treatment he/she might have a change of heart. Would you like to sit down for hours on end answering questions that have no relevance to you? I didn’t think so.

The situation becomes more complex when you take into account that some AD/HD kids have absolutely no problem concentrating one on one but become jelly when put in a group situation.

One good thing has come out of all these different testing protocol and that is the intelligence of an Attention Deficit Disorder (Add) adolescent is often in the normal range if not higher and therefore the medical establishment declares that it is not the cause of the poor behaviour.

Let us cast our minds back to the time of Albert Einstein. He was actually made to leave school because his lecturers thought he was incompetent! Perhaps there should be a change in educational system rather than singling out the healthy, vibrant young minds.

Get ready for part 3 where we dissect and investigations.