Adhd

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD has been around in one way or another for a long time. According to Mash and Wolfe (2010) it was described in various books over one hundred years ago therefore it has caused significant challenges to the people with ADHD, their families and society all in different ways for many years now. It important to first begin by describing various aspects of this disorder in order to have a clear understanding of what we are dealing with before continuing onto answering how this disorder poses challenges to families and society at large.

ADHD simply put is a disorder that manifests symptoms like inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity and these symptoms must cause significant impairment within various settings in the child’s life according to the APA (cited in Mash & Wolfe, 2010). At first these symptoms were thought to be due to poor “inhibitory volition” and “defective moral control” later it was thought that influenza and encephalitis caused these symptoms leading to the disorder being labelled as “brain injured child syndrome” (Mash & Wolfe, 2010, pp.120-121). These are just two examples of how this disorder has been viewed in the past, each passing decade bringing more sophisticated and knowledgeable offerings to the table.

The challenge to society here has been to struggle to find out what this disorder was through research and trial and error. The families who had a child with the symptoms struggled to cope with their children as in the past treatments were not advanced. Lastly and often forgotten, the child with ADHD suffered not knowing what was wrong with them and being labelled as all different sorts of things which could affect the rest of their lives.

In our time the central symptoms are those of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. It is important to note here that there are varying degrees to which a child can have these symptoms as well as varying number or symptoms that each child experiences....