by Sharon Early

Created on: August 12, 2010

Attention Deficit Hyper-activity Disorder is a label that is pinned to a lot of children these days. There are a number of people from both medical professionals and lay-people who believe that this diagnosis can be and is applied to many children who may not actually suffer from this disorder, or who are on the borderline between having and not having the condition. ADHD is said to be the absolute most commonly diagnosed and well studied psychiatric condition which affects children. Estimates put it at around 3-5% of the world's children who suffer with this disorder, they also estimate that 2-16% of school aged children are diagnosed with Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Between 30 and 50% of people diagnosed in childhood with ADHD continue to suffer with symptoms of this disorder into their adult years. Doctors surmise that adolescents and adults who suffer with symptoms of ADHD develop coping mechanisms to help them manage their ADHD symptoms.

ADHD is classified under the following descriptions:

disruptive behavior disorder

conduct disorder

antisocial disorder

oppositional defiant disorder

The three subtypes for ADHD are predominantly hyper-active, predominantly inattentive, and combined hyper-active-impulsive and inattentive. For clinical and diagnostic purposes the majority of symptoms must either fall into the hyperactivity-impulsivity category or the inattention category for the purposes of arriving upon the subtype that is presenting predominantly in the child. There is a lot of debate over properly diagnosing this condition and the need to be careful not to over-diagnose that children suffer from this psychological disorder when they do not. If a child is diagnosed to have the ADHD disorder or Syndrome the question before you then is, to medicate or not to medicate?

ADHD can present early on in a child's social development stages or it can manifest symptoms in adolescence. Symptomatic behavior can vary from mild and easily manageable to severe. If your child's symptoms and behavior fall into the high moderate or severe range as a parent you will probably recognize that something is not quite right with your child. The higher the degree of symptomatic behaviors the more likely it is that a person in close contact with a child with severe ADHD will correctly identify and categorize the behaviors correctly and seek treatment.

Moderate to severe ADHD is not only hard to mistake, it is often difficult to control, both for a parent and for

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