Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

What disorder affects six-point-four million people and eleven percent of children each year after diagnosis? It’s a very common amongst four to seventeen-year-olds. It is called Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, otherwise known ADHD. ADHD is a very common disorder. About eleven percent of school-aged children have either ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) or ADHD. The condition is more commonly recognized in boys rather than girls. Men’s symptoms are almost like a base in what we associate ADHD with. Just like our brain, men and women have differences in their ADHD symptoms. ADHD is a very common disorder, and about fifteen percent of the U.S’s population has ADHD and the diagnosis rate is on the rise. Since the upsurge in diagnosis doctors have found multiple medications to treat the symptoms, ADHD is a disorder that has come a long way since the start.ADHD is a psychological disorder that has been around forever.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is a neurodevelopmental abnormality usually identified and diagnosed at the age of 7. Statistics show that kids ages five to seven are the most likely to present ADHD at these ages. Since ADHD develops in the brain, the disorder starts to burrow its way into the child’s mind and interworkings of their everyday thoughts and actions. It is usual for kids to act hyperactive at that age but with kids that exhibit abnormal amounts of hyperactivity compared to “regular” kids. Doctor Sir George Still was the first doctor/scientist to recognize ADHD as a mental condition which he named “ Hyperkinetic Impulse Disorder ”. Later on, the National

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Institute of Mental Health recognized it as a mental disorder and the NIMH renamed it a more “suitable” name. Since the disorder is an abnormality it is believed to develop around the of three or five. Which around the age of seven is when it starts to portray. Kids with ADHD tend to not have many friends because of their jumpy personality, they sometimes miss social cues. “As children get older, social interactions become more complicated, and children with ADHD fall behind” (Gay Edelman). Because of their missed social cues, kids with ADHD tend to be picked on as weak because they don’t have as many friends.

They sometimes don’t have friends because they often invade others personal space, speak rude comments, and play too rough for most kids. All of those reasons make up why they don’t have a lot of friends however, this is not the case with all of them. ADHD has been around since humans have evolved, just like other disorders’ and diseases abnormality in development and duplications evolve.Men and women have differences in ADHD symptoms that go unrecognized too. Men and women’s brains are obviously wired differently which would explain why the symptoms associated with ADHD are different.

Women tend to get overwhelmed, stressed, socially anxious, and fidgety. Men act very jittery, inattentive, and spacey. Many studies have interviewed children with ADHD of different genders. Girls tend to have fewer friends and feel sad while boys sometimes flourish in social environments because they feel less overwhelmed, but are instead unfocused. From young ages, girls and boys are taught differently and learn differently because if the accommodations to teach what is ladylike and manly. It’s a different story when the children grow up “Research into ADHD in adulthood suggests an almost equal balance between men and women.” (Jane Collingwood). Since the start, boys and girls have been different and it’s not a shock to see differences in the symptoms.

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Since the discovery of the disorder, medications have arisen to combat the symptoms. People have been trying to find ways cope and control the side effect using different types of prescriptions. Adderall is one of the most used prescriptions for people with ADHD. The drug is very easy to get a hold of in turn increases the amount of addiction to Adderall. Since the addiction outrage, lots of people are turning to Ritalin, but it causes people to forget and impairs peoples speaking and movement. The drug isn’t the best for young kids though. Daytrana is on the rise. It is a patch worn by the person on either their stomach, back, or thigh. The patch releases a type of medicine absorbed through the child’s skin. ADHD’s diagnosis has shot up since the nineteen-eighties. In recent years there has been more and more diagnostics each day and year. ADHD affects millions of people worldwide and the importance of understanding it is rising just like the disorder.Just because multiple medicines have arisen that doesn’t mean what people think it affects peoples lives and the way they live.