In accordance to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (hereinafter referred to as ADHD) is a neurobehavioral disorder that targets 3-5 percent of all American children, and that interferes with an individual’s ability to stay focused on a task and to exercise cognitive and/or behavioral age-appropriate inhibition (NINDS, 2011, n.p.). The ADHD definition of the American Psychiatric Association provided in the Oxford Handbook of School Psychology supplement the previous one, as it states that this neurobehavioral disorder is a also a psychiatric one, known for “developmentally inappropriate levels of inattention, response inhibition, and overactivity that result in functional impairment in more than one setting” (ed. by Bray & Kehle, 2011, p. 285). The definitions are mutually complementary, and can be summed by the conclusive and laconic statement that ADHD is both a psychiatric and neurobehavioral disorder that is characterized by either considerable challenges of inattention or impulsive activities and overall hyperactivity, or even a combination of both.
It is a well-established fact that this disorder affects children, and that the symptoms may emerge before seven years of age (American Psychiatric Association, 2000, p. 92), nevertheless, it must be noted that there is a very high probability that the children diagnosed with this condition will have ADHD symptoms throughout their adulthood years. In simple words, this disorder results in children acting restless, impulsive, unfocused, impairing their responsiveness and ability to learn properly.
“Some of the warning signs of ADHD include failure to listen to instructions, inability to organize oneself and school work, fidgeting with hands and feet, talking too much, leaving projects, chores and homework unfinished, and having trouble paying attention to and responding to details” (NINDS, 2011, n.p.). Unfortunately, despite such detailed list of symptoms characteristic of ADHD, there is no definitive test to diagnose this condition, as well as no ways to professionally train clinicians to conduct ADHD diagnosis and treatment. The absence of a certainty, when it comes having a systematic one and only approach to diagnosing this disorder is also fueled up by the fact that the symptoms of ADHD can be easily observed in people, who are suffering from different psychiatric conditions, which have nothing to do with ADHD.
As Marie Cheour, the main contributor to the article “Biological Aspects of ADHD”, notes until the present moment it is not quite clear what facilitates the development of this disorder, “but it has been shown to have strong genetic components, and certain environmental toxics, such as lead, have been linked to ADHD” (Cheour, 2010, n.p.). It appears that women, who consume alcohol or tobacco during their pregnancy, are subjected to a much higher risk of giving birth to a child, who will eventually develop ADHD. At the same time smoking and drinking during pregnancy will never be proven to have a positive effect on either a bearing woman, or a child. Thus, this particular fact does not provide any essential data about this psychiatric and neurobiological condition. The abnormalities observed under this disorder affect both …