Word: adhd
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), as anybody who has been within shouting distance of a schoolyard in the past 10 years knows, was the pediatric diagnosis of the decade. According to one estimate, some 2 million American children are bouncing off the walls with it. For parents and teachers driven to distraction by a hyperactive kid, psychotropic stimulants like Ritalin have been a godsend; thousands of students who couldn't sit still long enough to learn have been able to calm down, pay attention and get the job done, thanks to Ritalin...
There is nothing clear about ADHD. The diagnosis is based on a checklist of subjective judgments--rating a child's inattention, distractibility, impulsivity and so on. It's hard enough for doctors to distinguish between an energetic teenager and one who has a behavior disorder. How can they make those judgments when the patient is still learning how to talk...
What's better for a child with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder--behavior therapy or medications like Ritalin? The answer is, well, complicated. A new report shows medication alone or combined with therapy is decidedly more effective than therapy alone in reducing overt symptoms of adhd--the off-the-wall jumpiness and inattentiveness that exhausted parents know all too well. But combining drugs with behavior therapy seems to benefit kids in ways that drugs alone don't--like enabling them to make friends more easily and even score higher on achievement tests...
Increasingly, it looks as though children with Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder, rather than being brats by choice, are really governed by a medical condition. According to a study in the current issue of the medical journal the Lancet, children with ADHD may have a lower-than-normal amount of the chemical dopamine, which is associated with concentration and motivation. ADHD children, says the report, have an average of 70 percent more dopamine transporters in their brains than other children - evidence, researchers think, that these brains developed the extra transporters in a vain effort to compensate for a lack of dopamine...
...Still, there remains a question of cause and effect: Do kids have ADHD because their brains don't produce enough dopamine, or do their brains not produce enough dopamine because of external factors? "Would this problem afflict our children if we were still out on the frontier battling elephants?" asks TIME science writer Christine Gorman. "Probably not." Many attribute the symptoms of ADHD - short attention span, fidgetiness, lack of motivation - to modernity's sensory overload: Perhaps the brain is merely compensating for the five hours of electronic media the average child absorbs each day. And we thought this information revolution...