welcome to children's mom docs. i’m dr. dehra harris. i’m a pediatricpsychiatrist at st. louis children's hospital. today we're going to be talkingabout adhd. one of the first questions i get asked is ‘is adhd overdiagnosed?’ i thinkit's a hard question to answer in the most important thing is to go tosomebody you trust for the diagnosis. there really are standards. the main oneis that adhd affects all kinds of different aspects of their life, sothings like rating scale should be taking place at school, potentiallysports, definitely at home. a lot of parents are hoping to avoid medication.medication is a very personal decision
for every family. there are some thingsthat you can try before pursuing medication some of these include avoiding dyes,changing diet, and addressing sleep. if these are things that you can easily doas a family, i recommend trying them. but it's really important that we thinkabout your child's overall functioning. for some children, it doesn't matter howmany of those changes we make they're still going to have trouble at school orat home or socially. in those cases it really matters to talk to someone againthat you trust. a lot of pediatricians feel comfortable handling the initialdiagnosis of adhd. if you have additional
concerns there are people like me who do morecomplicated cases or can answer additional questions. we have acollaborative care clinic at children's hospital that works with pediatriciansto help them take care of their patients especially with mental health issueslike adhd. sometimes girls are actually diagnosed later or notdiagnosed at all especially if they have the inattentive type. rather thandisrupting the class, they tend to lose information. historically, adhd has actually been morecommonly diagnosed and boys largely because they often present withdisruptive behaviors that are easy to
pick up in a classroom. we have to becareful actually that we don't miss boys who have the inattentive type. there'smore of the daydreamer or ones who are just missing content because they're focusedon something else. so what we usually see is a child who'sbeen doing well, but suddenly hits a grade where it doesn't seem like thingswork anymore. it's really important to get the schools involved early and get assessments done becausesometimes it's a matter of attention. i like to think of it as somebody elseholding the remote when you watch tv. this means that every couple of minutesthey change the channel and you're
always catching up trying to figure outwhat happened last time. when the content is easy, you can do that but as yougo up in the grade sometimes you start having big knowledgegaps that then affect how you do academically. one of the things that cancomplicate making the diagnosis of adhd is a lot of things affect attention. i liketo think this is a busy intersection. so depression actually can lead toinattention. anxiety can actually lead to over focus or difficulty withdistractibility and several other conditions including learning disorderscan be both common in patients with adhd and can be misdiagnosed. if you decide todo medication, i want you to know that
these medicines have been used for over50 years and when used by skilled people they can be very safe and very effective. the goal is to get on the smallestamount of dose, but still meaningfully impact how they do at school or socially.this is a great time to have a team take any of your questions to yourpediatrician. if you're worried about your kid pay attention being hyper or justdoing things without thinking that's a great place to start. if you have anybigger questions or you're worried about
anxiety or depression you can also work with us at acollaborative care clinic. thanks for
tuning in. be sure to check out other videos on ourchannel
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