Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) is a medical diagnosis applied to children and adults who are experiencing characteristic behavioural and cognitive difficulties in important aspects of their lives, for example in familial and personal relationships at school or work. The diagnosis attributes these difficulties to problems of impulse control, hyperactivity and inattention. It is claimed that these problems are caused primarily by dysfunctions in the frontal lobes of the brain and that there are predisposing genes. Currently the diagnosis is claimed to relate to between 2% and 5% of all children of compulsory school age in England and Wales.

THE DIAGNOSIS OF AD/HD

In 1968 the American Psychiatric Association (APA) produced the first standardised set of criteria for what was then called hyperkinetic reaction of childhood. This gave way in 1980 to attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity (ADDH), which was revised in 1987 to attention deficit disorder (ADD). A subsequent revision (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) produced the current diagnostic criteria for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD). These changes in nomenclature reflect changing conceptualisations of the nature of the condition, with a shift away from an emphasis on causation to a continuing emphasis on behavioural symptoms as the defining characteristics of the condition. According to the APA, children with AD/HD fall into one of three main subtypes: predominantly inattentive and distracted, predominantly hyperactive–impulsive, and combining hyperactivity with inattention and distractibility.