ADHD Diagnosis – How An Accurate Diagnosis Can Change Your Child’s Life
Imagine having a blood test, which could show that your child had ADHD. Dream on! As yet no such test exists. So ADHD diagnosis and how it is performed because an inaccurate diagnosis could change your child’s life for the worst.
The actual ADHD diagnosis should take into consideration medical, physical and psychological factors. The specialist who may be a family doctor specializing in ADHD or a child specialist should first rule out any other condition, which sometimes have similar symptoms to that of ADHD.
The symptoms of restlessness, constant motion and fidgeting and constant talking may be some of the symptoms that you notice as a parent. But these do not necessarily mean that this is ADHD! The specialist has to take into account how they are affecting academic life, home life, and social relationships with other children and so on.
Then there is the whole question of the onset of the symptoms and at what age they started. Have they lasted for more than six months and in how many settings are they present. If a child behaves completely differently at school, then this may not be ADHD at all. There might be some psychological problem within the family or a difficulty in relating to one of the parents.
There is a great debate now about the age when ADHD starts. There have been cases of babies of two or three being prescribed psycho stimulants and an extreme case where bipolar was discovered in a two year old! Normally though, the usual age is from four or five years up but now they are thinking of revising the upper age limit and the new DSM Edition V will probably put the age range from seven to twelve.
Correct ADHD diagnosis is so important because it can impact your child’s life and future in a very decisive way. There have been disastrous cases of misdiagnosis and there is a lot of suspicion that ADHD is being over diagnosed on a grand scale. The only thing to do is to make sure you are not getting a hasty diagnosis so refuse a prescription for psycho stimulants if your paediatrician gives your child that after only a ten-minute consultation.
As regards treatment, there is growing concern about the amphetamine type drugs, which are generally felt to be over prescribed. Alarming research reveals that the effects of these wear off after three years. If there is no behaviour modification in place, there is a high risk of carrying ADHD into adulthood and the challenges that person will face will be considerable.
So, there you have it. There is an urgent need for more accurate and careful ADHD diagnosis and there is also the need to pull back from the prescription drugs and all their unknown and hidden dangers. It is certainly time to look at alternatives, which I have outlined for you in my website below.
Tired of unhappy, whining, badly behaved children? Discover how a correct ADHD diagnosis can turn your child around. Experts now tell us that child behaviour programs combined with a natural treatment for ADHD is by far the most effective ADHD treatment.