Ψυχάγειν Καβάλα Ψυχοθεραπεία

The multi – level approach in the diagnosis of ADHD. Oral presentation within the symposium entitled “The multi-level approach in the diagnosis and treatment of Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)” at the 27th International School of Psychology Association Colloquium, Athens.

The diagnosis of ADHD is recognised as an important step towards effective treatment. This procedure is usually based on the criteria defined in the DSM-IV and its derived structured interviews and standardized rating scales. Currently, the use of these criteria and the assessment methods based on them is effortlessly considered by a lot of mental health specialists as the essential guide for diagnosis.

However, informants often provide different ratings of a child’s behaviour. It may happen that a child does meet or not the criteria for the diagnosis of ADHD dependent upon whether the rating scale is completed by the mother or the father. These phenomena may result from the lack of objective measures for the diagnosis of ADHD and from the overvaluation of rating scales.

In this presentation, we attempt to address the difficulties encountered in clinical practice during the diagnostic procedure of ADHD, due to the fact that the current classification systems fail to take into account a number of important factors, like the etiology of the disorders, the ‘epigenesis’ of symptoms and the effects of gender and socio-economic environment on the development of psychopathology. In our perspective, the diagnosis of ADHD should be based not only on the existence of primary symptoms, but mainly on the evaluation of secondary difficulties that may impede the child’s functionality. Within this framework, qualitative and not quantitative assessment appears more salient. A multi-level approach for the diagnosis of ADHD is described and guidelines for the pertinent diagnostic procedure are proposed.