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Possibility Of ADHD

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More and more parents pay attention to the problems of child mental illness as the rate of mental disorder increased in children. But studies have shown that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), one of the most common mental disorder in children and adolescents, might be overdiagnosed in younger children compared to others in the same grade. The health news article Why a child's birth date predicts whether they'll be medicated for ADHD that is published in The Sydney Morning Herald discusses the ADHD diagnoses process and argues that the probability for the youngest children in the class to get ADHD medication is significantly higher. The study shows that children’s immature behaviors may be misdiagnosed as symptoms of ADHD. The …show more content…

Statistical uncertainty, which is errors due to measurement or calculation mistakes, is balanced out by the large amount of data, which is less significant comparing to the systematic uncertainty of the …show more content…

Although there is some systematic uncertainty of the research study, the article reveals the fact that children’s immature behavior can be detected as signals rather than noises, which in fact cause bias in the diagnosis judgment. As a result, misdiagnosis or overdiagnosis in younger children may lead to errors such as false positive and false negative. Detecting and distinguishing signal and noise may be the most important when making an accurate diagnosis. Since the whole diagnosis is mostly based on subjective factor, which is the behavior of the child, the accurate detection by the pediatrician and a precise criteria of the diagnosis is required. In order to decrease the misdiagnosis of ADHD on younger children, the recommendation is that before making a diagnosis judgement, try to make a long-time observation on not just the children’s behavior, but also other influential factors such as family background as the child grow up. As the accuracy of the diagnosis result improve, more children, whether they have ADHD or not, will have a much better childhood experience and

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