Diagnosing ADHD in Adolescence

Diagnosing ADHD in Adolescence
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Diagnosing ADHD in Adolescence
Introduction
Attention- Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder is a medical condition that affects an individual’s essence to regulate behavior and attention. This condition is characterized by hyperactivity, impulsivity and inattention. People with ADHD who are not diagnosed in their early childhood may begin to exhibit obvious symptoms as they approach their teenage years (Barkley, 2002) Research has indicated that ADHD is has to do more with genes and that children who are diagnosed with this condition have relatives with this disorder. Scholars who have studied the function of the brain and its structure have revealed that adolescence with ADHD, brains differ from those who do not have the disorder. Teenagers with ADHD experience problems related to poor self esteem, worries about exams and careers, physical development, belonging to certain peer groups, decision making and authority. They tend to be disruptive in class, involve in fights and conflicts with family members and perform poorly in their academics. The National Institute of Health (NIH) stated that ADHD is one of the most common mental disorders among adolescents today. ADHD is a challenging period for adolescents because it leads the teenager to initiate sexual behaviors early, drop-out from school, abuse drugs, and engage in antisocial crimes.
Part I
The aim of this study is to find out how ADHD is diagnosed in Adolescents and the practical problems associated with this kind of disorder and to later discuss any recommendations for the diagnosing of ADHD in adolescents. What is known about ADHD is that the Adolescents who have this kind of disorder tend to write themselves off socially and academically. They also have more problems with self-esteem than teens that do not have ADHD. Conflicts tend to arise with their parents and particularly with their mothers. The purpose of conducting this study was to find out how ADHD condition in adolescents affects their general development that is, in relation to social, physical, mental and psychological development. Another purpose of this study was to address issues that surround childhood symptoms, diagnostic threshold and the use of ratings related to self and informant. For example there were doubts raised over the reports that parents gave about their teenager childhood functioning (Margaret, 2012).
In order to evaluate the recommendations from the diagnostics the researcher was able to link reports from the parents and the teachers and self-reports of recent impairments and symptoms. The researcher was in a position to also suggest the essence for a low diagnostic threshold by evaluating the control of group-referenced and impairment-based data. Out of this, the researcher was in a position to give his hypothesis as follows: that linking teacher’s reports with the parent’s reports would result to sufficient amount of diagnostic data about the adolescents, that a reduced diagnostic threshold would be suitable for both approaches and a recent threshold of six symptoms would rule out an important portion of adolescents with current impairment and childhood diagnosis and that parents reports would be similar to reports of baseline symptoms previously gathered.
Part II
The participants of the study were the ADHD group and control group. The ADHD groups were recruited by the PALS staff. Pittsburgh ADHD Longitudinal Study (PALS) is a study of people who have gained a standard and valid diagnosis of ADHD. The PALS staffs are a group of people who conduct yearly follow-ups in clinics to validate the diagnosis of children. The ADHD groups were from a pool of 516 study –eligible individuals. Out of the 516,493 were recruited by the PALS through interviews. The control groups consisted of 240 individuals without ADHD and were recruited from the greater Pittsburgh community between 1999 and 2001 from sources such as advertisements in local newspapers, colleges and local universities, and pediatric practices in Allegheny County. The recruitment delayed 3 months behind ADHD group. These participants took part in the Summer Treatment program (STP) for children with ADHD an 8 week program that constituted parent training, behavioral modification and psychoactive medication trials (Margaret, 2012). The design of the study was longitudinal because there were several observations of the same subject over a period of time lasting many years. The research staff was in a position to do follow-ups and detect changes in characteristics of the target population both at group and ...