Male1: Tonight, Dr. Les Lanet is going to discuss attention deficit disorder, Dr. Lanet.
Dr. Lanet: I am a board certified child and adolescence psychiatrist as well as an adult psychiatrist, board certified.
Attention deficit disorder actually is also a lifelong condition and it exists in people who happen to be born with it and do not develop it. it is not diagnosed usually until some period later in childhood, the average age so to speak is the fourth grade and the reason for that is that, by the fourth grade, the work is getting more complicated and you are expected more to behave like a little adult. In kindergarten and first grade, you can run—it just does not show up as much, but let me explain what attention deficit disorder is. It has gone through a variety of names. In colonial America, there was a poem written about Fidgety Phil who could not sit still. I do not remember the rest of the poem that is not important. He did not get any diagnosis, but we can imagine that Phil was the one moving in the school house and did not sit still and got out of his seat and annoyed the teacher and the teacher probably talked to his parents, and he was just a difficult child. Later, we got to understand that it was not really Phil’s fault. It was some kind of a neurotic problem that had to do with parents raising the child incorrectly and they toilet training or whatever and then they got to understand this better and realized that it basically has to do with the way the nervous system is built and that name was then changed to minimal brain dysfunction, but it was thwarted after a while because minimum brain dysfunction is abbreviated as MBD, it was often thought as minimal brain damage, which sort of did not sound too good, so we changed it to hyperkinetic syndrome, but that emphasized the Fidgety Phil part and not some of the other aspects. What is involved with attention deficit disorder is difficult to gain focusing. There can be over activity, hyperactivity. The current name attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, not so long ago we called it attention deficit disorder two types with hyperactivity, without hyperactivity since 1987, we put the age back in and it is called ADHD, but it can be inattentive type.
Now, if I were in charge of naming this, I would give it another name because attention deficit disorder, while it is an improvement over Fidgety Phil and minimal brain dysfunction and hyperkinetic syndrome, it is somewhat confusing sometimes. I have had Johnny in here and see him and it seems that Johnny is having trouble learning and he is having some behavior problems.
I told mom and dad that Johnny has attention deficit disorder and sometimes they will say, I do not think so. Now, I know what is going to happen because I have gone through this and they are going to tell me that he can pay attention when he wants to and a typical example is he will sit down on a computer and he will play the video games for seven hours and does not bother anybody, but when he is not doing that, he is tearing the house apart, pulling his sister’s hair, chasing the cat, making a mess of the house, does not get his homework done. He can pay attention when he wants to, but that is really not what is happening. He can pay attention when it is interesting to him, when it is stimulating to him. I would rename this condition if I were the one naming it in search for stimulation disorder. If you give them stimulation, they are okay. If you give them something that is tedious, something that anybody might find tedious but we know if we do not finish this form, it is just not going to get done. It is harder for them. So attention deficit disorder is a little bit like sitting in a traffic. If you are in a car with friends and you have the radio on and the car is moving, as compared to the same radio station, the same companions, same cars stuck in traffic, that is what attention deficit disorder is like. It makes people feel nuts--
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