High Prevalence of ADHD: How Best can we Identify Cases of ADHD from the General Population?

Major advances have been made over the past decades in understanding the difficulties of children and adults with ADHD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In spite of it,numerous research studies have documented the increase of people diagnosed withADHD in the last few decades. Thus, the aim of this paper has been to provide the cornerstones for a basic understanding of such high prevalence of ADHD.

Recent population-based studies indicate that ADHD is a condition affecting approximately 5% of the child population. It this is the case, yet significant evidence exists that far fewer children receive ADHD services. As result of it, in many countries concerted serious efforts directed at earlier detection and diagnosis of ADHD are well justified. In fact, the diagnosis in practice is made with remarkable differences in frequency between nations. At the same time, taking into consideration individual differences, the data over the past 10 years have shown that there is great heterogeneity in the diagnostic methods for children and adults with ADHD.(Read More)