What Is Attention Deficit Disorder (ADHD)?

October 07, 2008

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What Is Attention Deficit Disorder (ADHD)?

by Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P.
reviewed by Laura Jana, M.D., F.A.A.P.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the latest name for a problem that doctors have known about for nearly 100 years now. A few years ago, it was called Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and many people still use that term. Both ADHD and ADD mean basically the same thing.

Children with ADHD have significant problems in three areas of functioning: paying attention, controlling their level of activity, and thinking before they act. Doctors label these three problem areas inattentiveness, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.

What sets children with ADHD apart?
Almost every child has some amount of trouble with inattentiveness, hyperactivity, and impulsivity, at least some of the time, in some settings, at some time in their life. Just think about the two-year-old unlucky enough to find herself waiting for service in a fancy restaurant. Learning to pay attention, sit still, and think first are challenges every child faces in growing up.

What makes children with ADHD different, however, is that they have much more difficulty dealing with these challenges than other children. By definition, a child cannot have ADHD unless problems with inattentiveness, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness are so severe that they make normal functioning at home, in school, or with friends impossible or nearly so.

Important considerations

Some children have a severe problem with inattentiveness but not particularly with hyperactivity or impulsivity. They might have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder-Inattentive subtype (ADHD-I).

The problem cannot be caused by another medical condition. For example, some children have to take medicines that make them hyperactive and inattentive. That's not ADHD.

The problem has to be present before age seven, and has to have gone on for at least six months before a doctor should diagnose ADHD. If a child has had no ADHD symptoms, and all of a sudden at age eight or nine starts acting like she has ADHD, it's likely that the problem is something else, often a new stress at school or in the home, or sometimes a new medical problem.

The next section explains how doctors go about making the diagnosis of ADHD.


RELATED INFORMATION

			Causes of ADHD
			Attention Problems

Attention Problems: ADHD and More

Created September 05, 2000
Reviewed September 22, 2000

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