Understanding My ADHD - A book for kids and parents
How exactly do doctors arrive at a diagnosis of ADHD for a child? The most important component to arrive at an accurate diagnosis of ADHD is for a physician or a mental health professional to complete a thorough and comprehensive evaluation. Children often are diagnosed with ADHD after a 5-10 minute evaluation with their pediatrician and parents are given forms to fill out as well as their child’s teacher. Parents are often left feeling uncertain as to whether or not their child has ADHD or if something else is causing their child attentional or behavioral problems. In addition, parents are concerned that their child has been prescribed medication for ADHD after a brief evaluation by their child’s pediatrician. Unfortunately, this happens all too often and the steps to arrive at a diagnosis of ADHD are as follows:
1. A clinical interview should be completed with the parents in order to obtain a thorough background history. This should include developmental history, medical problems or complications, school and home issues, any behavioral problems, social/interpersonal skills, etc… In other words, everything else should be ruled out before a diagnosis of ADHD is given. ADHD is a diagnosis of exclusion. We need to rule out that there is not another issue or problem before we arrive at a diagnosis of ADHD. A medical evaluation may also be needed to determine that the behavior or ) symptoms are not caused by a medical issue.
2. A child’s parents and the child’s teacher should complete a behavior rating scale in order to determine the child’s behavior in both settings. In addition, this is an excellent way to determine if there are any discrepancies between the parent’s report of behavior and the child’s teacher’s report. If there is a huge difference between what the parents are saying and what the teacher is saying, this might strictly be a behavioral issue in one of the settings and we should be looking at a discipline problem and not an attentional issue.
3. The child should also be interviewed and behavioral observations should be made by the psychiatrist, psychologist, or a mental health professional that is conducting the evaluation. Direct behavioral observation of the child are often very helpful, however this is not a necessary component to reach a diagnosis of ADHD.
4. Intelligence and/or achievement testing is also beneficial to determine if a learning disability is present. Children who are struggling in school often act out or are inattentive as a result of extreme frustration with their school work. A learning disability evaluation is often beneficial to rule out that the child is not struggling academically, which affects behavior at school.
Before any child can be diagnosed as having ADHD, a complete and thorough evaluation needs to be completed and all information obtained should be scrutinized carefully. Other mental health issues or problems need to be ruled out that may be causing a child attentional difficulties. Most ADHD evaluations completed by a psychologist or a mental health professional are 2-3 hours in duration in order to obtain the necessary clinical information.
For more info: Information on ADHD by Russell A. Barkley, Ph.D., Treatment of ADHD by Keath Low, School Success for ADHD Kids by Brenda Nicholson
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