ADHD: A CONTROVERSIAL SUBJECT

Course overview

The purpose of this course is to review, in brief, some of the issues that surround the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD. Most of these issues have been around for quite some time, so they should not be new. Assessment and diagnosis is one such area – for example, looking at how thoroughly and consistently children and their parents are evaluated against the DSM IV criteria for ADHD. Obviously another area of great controversy has to do with the tendency to prescribe medication as the first line of treatment for ADHD, especially considering the safety of the medicating of young children, its long-term efficacy and the effectiveness of behavioral interventions. We will look briefly at the results of the NIMH Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA), one of the largest and longest term evaluations of the effect of treatment on children with ADHD, and consider the implications of its findings. Key words: ADHD, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Attention Deficit, hyperactivity, impulsivity, assessment, diagnosis, DSM, PI, performance improvement, behavioral intervention, medication strengths-based, Genie Skypek