mainarticles   mainarticles
mainarticles
mainarticles   mainarticles
mainarticles
mainarticles

Home | Disease & Illness


The 4 swift steps of Attention Deficit Disorder - (Add) diagnosis part 2

By: Hoe Bing
 

Step 3: Add an objective assessment

Over the years medical doctors have worked hard to bring some science into the diagnosis of ADD…You know that diagnosing Attention Deficit Disorder With/Without Hyperactivity is as much an art as it is a science but look what they came up with.

Questionnaires!

Questionnaires have been produced which allow teachers and parents to rate the behaviours of the adolescent. Guess who came up with the questionnaires? If you guessed The APA you are spot on!

They decided (just as they decided that AD/HD should be a dis-ease via a show of hands) that a questionnaire with a list of diagnostic factor should clarify the situation. So working together with psychologist, a ‘wide ranging’ catalogue of questions were put to paper.

Recently more sophisticated assessments have been devised to measure attention and persistence. Can you imagine for a second if they could investigate 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 assessment that is 100% accurate…why is that? You know the answer, because of the elusiveness of the symptoms and signs, add to that mix variability, inconsistency and you have on your hands an nebulous mass of criteria’s that can fit most any body.

Having said that, the current opinion tools do shed some light on the AD-HD 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 adolescent’s Attention Deficit Disorder (Add) behaviour.

Let’s get stuck into Questionnaires.
Parents and educators can complete questionnaires which score specific Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (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 Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - (Adhd)D.

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.
Attention deficit disorder 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 ambiguous 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 assessments and profiles.

This is an interesting area. It is believed that each AD/HD young child 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 investigations 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 child. During the assessments, the psychologist will comment that the adolescent 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 adolescents 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) young kid 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 mentors 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 assessments.

Article Source: Main Articles

To read all the articles in the series The Gift of ADHD

This article may be reproduced wholly or in part without written permission provided the byline, resource area, and any hyperlinks remain in order to give proper credit to the author.

Internet search engines and directory listings are imperative to your sites existence and success. Submit Your Website to the Searchen Networks directory and search engine to achieve authoritive inbound links.

Please Rate this Article

 

Click the XML Icon Above to Receive Disease & Illness Articles Via RSS!
Additional Articles From - Home | Disease & Illness
mainarticles
mainarticles Submit Articles
mainarticles Member Login
mainarticles Top Authors
mainarticles Most Popular Articles
mainarticles Submission Guidelines
mainarticles Ezine Notifications
mainarticles Article RSS Feeds
mainarticles New Stuff
mainarticles About Us
mainarticles Link to Us
mainarticles Contact Us
mainarticles Privacy Policy
mainarticles Terms of Service
  :: Top Author Businesses:
Try your luck, Play BlackJack
 
  :: Our Supporters:
 
 
 
 
mainarticles
mainarticles
Main Articles. All Rights Reserved. © 2005, 2006
Use of our service is protected by our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
mainarticles
 

Powered by Article Dashboard