“Of US children aged 8 to 15 years, 8.7%, an estimated 2.4 million, meet DSM-IV criteria for ADHD—according to a report by Archives of Pediatrics.”
First—who cares about the report? Hopefully you do, but why do you care? That’s for you to know and you can tell us if you like. For the purpose of this article, I will tell you what I think:
The report basically tells me, right off, that more kids between 8—15 have ADHD than we thought. Yeah? Previous estimates were between 5—7% depending where we get our information. But wait; in the report I find that only 3k some-odd kids were included in the tests. What’s more, is that:
“An additional 3.3% (95% CI, 2.4%-4.1%) did not meet DSM-IV ADHD criteria but had both a parent-reported prior diagnosis of ADHD and treatment with ADHD medications at some time during the past 12 months. However, the following results focus on those meeting DSM-IV ADHD criteria in the past year.”
Okay, that’s all I am going to include from this report and instead focus on my opinion, because, although the report is useful to the medical profession, I just don’t see it as a practical estimate of the general U.S. 301+ million pop or the world’s 6.7 Billion pop. 3000 candidates and 3.3% prior diagnosed excluded is not the end all, be all of estimitations, in my opinion. Yes, the studies are important and should continue, but, what do we know according to common sense and eye balling the Learning Disorder? It’s a heck of a lot more prevalent than we ever imagined and 8% is only the tip of the iceberg!
I think we can all agree that everyone has ADHD tendencies and everyone, diagnosed, or not, can benefit from learning techniques created for Adders. Why is that? Maybe the education systems take themselves way too seriously and should get back to the basics of fundamentally teaching people through interaction? From my experience, talking to both Adders and those who think, or know, they don’t have ADD or ADHD, interactive learning experiences are the preferred method of learning. So many darn standards and expectations which are set for everyone, but if there is one thing we all know about “everyone”, is that no two people are alike, no matter if they have a learning disorder or not.
The next study should be ‘how many do not have ADD or ADHD’! In the last few months I have talked to more people than in the entire rest of my life, with concern to ADD ADHD, and every single person knows someone with either ADD or ADHD and if they don’t know someone with ADD or ADHD, well, as it turns out, they themselves have it! Now this is a personal study and I am just eyeballing this, but that kind of tells me 8% might be a bit low!
How many people do you know with ADD or ADHD? How many people do you know are related to an Adder? If you have ADD or ADHD and since we know it is hereditary—how many in your direct family have ADD or ADHD? So tell me and our fellow readers: what percent of the population do you ‘think’ have ADD or ADHD just from eyeballing it???
Please, don’t misunderstand me, I think the job the medical profession is doing to study and validate ADD ADHD is important, very, very important, but in reality we already know that this type of research is slow and not really as accurate as is needed.
~Bryan
For those who would like to read the report from the Archives of Pediatrics, here is the link to their website:
http://www.archpedi.ama-assn.org/
