More than 1 in 10 children aged 4-17 in the U.S. has ADHD

[healthy11]

news.yahoo.com/adhd-impact-families-predicts-whether-kids-needed-services-224047431.html

A portion of the article states: “ADHD is not a trivial problem. It can have major negative effects on children's learning, social interactions, emotional well-being, self-esteem and quality of life,” said lead author Dr. Daryl Efron by email.

“It has been our impression that some children with ADHD present quite late without having had professional assistance. We wanted to understand the factors which drive parents of children with ADHD to seek help,” said Efron, a pediatrician at Royal Children's Hospital in Parkville, Victoria.

Efron noted that treatment tends to work better when children receive multiple services, including remedial education, behavioral strategies and, often, medication.

In the U.S., more than 1 in 10 children aged 4 to 17 years old has ADHD and the number of children diagnosed has been increasing over the last decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention..."

[melvinhoward]

Yes, ADHD is not a very serious problem but can severely affect the child's learning skills.

[healthy11]

melvinhoward, I feel everything is relative; by comparison to having a child diagnosed with a brain tumor, for example, ADHD may not seem very serious. ADHD can, however affect MORE than just a child's learning skills. As noted above, it often does impact "social interactions, emotional well-being, self-esteem and quality of life,” and for some individuals, those negative effects continue into adulthood.

[melvinhoward]

I agree healthy11, it does affect social development of the child but proper counselling and behavioral therapy can somehow help to control the symptoms.

[healthy11]

Here's a perspective from a top pediatrician, who believes we're thinking about ADHD all wrong. In an editorial just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics, Dimitri Christakis says that we should be thinking more about a spectrum of "attentional capacity" that varies from individual to individual and situation to situation:
www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/01/04/459990844/were-thinking-about-adhd-all-wrong-says-a-top-pediatrician