ADHD: Regarded as a Medical Condition

check to the Ameri smoke psychiatrical Association's DSM-IV Criteria for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, the diagnosis of minimal brain dysfunction must get hold of symptoms that persist for at least six months, begin sooner the age of 7, impair the child's activity in key domains (e.g., academician, social, and domestic), and erupt pervasively (Hinshaw, 1994, p. 12). Features associated with this disorder be aggression and antisocial look, academic under get toment, peer rejection, and family dysfunction.

In terms of inattention, children with attention deficit disorder have their superior difficulty with tasks that require sustained attention or watchfulness. This mark is manifest even when the child is at play, but is oddly evident when the child must perform uninteresting, repetitive tasks such as executioning independently at school or at home, homework, or household chores (Barkley, 1990, p. 40). Although research indicates that ADHD children are no more susceptible to distractibility than normal children, some studies convalesce that ADHD children are more vulnerable to irrelevant stimulant (Barkley, 1990, p. 41). For instance, for a child with ADHD, the ticking of a clock readiness drown out a teacher's voice.

Another characteristic of children with ADHD is impulsivity. These children very much blurt out answers in class or act before thinking. Interrupting the conversations or activities of others is another characteristic. Antisocial behavior such as grabbing, shoving

The impulsivity of ADHD children leads to stigmatization and rejection by peers. Studies indicate that such youngsters, whether aggressive or nonaggressive, are frequently negatively appraised by their cohorts (Hinshaw, 1994, p. 17). Peer rejection can lead to long-term negative outcomes for ADHD children: "Peer sociometric appraisal has consistently revealed that negative appraisal by agemates in childishness is a strong predictor of such important long-term outcomes as school dropout, delinquency, and global indices of psychopathology" (Hinshaw, 1994, p. 17).

Children with ADHD visit considerable difficulty adjusting to the demands of the school regimen and, therefore, suffer academically.

According to experts, "Children with ADHD may frequently move from one incomplete task to another, consequently affecting their knowledge acquisition and grades" (Schwiebert, Sealander, and Tollerud, 1995, p. 251). These children routinely make heedless or careless errors in their work because they fail to wait for instructions to be completed: "When face up with tasks or situations in which they are encouraged to delay pursuance gratification and work toward a longer-term goal and larger reward, they often opt for the immediate, smaller reward that requires less work to achieve" (Barkley, 1990, p. 42).

Experts attribute the onset of ADHD to a variety of causes, with no single factor capable of explaining the disorder. Etiological findings are emerging in the following disciplines: neurological factors (e.g., neruotransmitter dysfunctions, delayed brain maturation, or diminished cerebral blood flow), psychophysiological findings, environmental toxins, side set up of medications, genetic factors, and environmental and psychosocial factors (e.g., parent-child interaction). According to Barkley (1990), "Most investigators in this area endorse a biological predisposition to [ADHD], much handle that of mental retardation, in which a variety of neurological etiologies (e
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