engleski

Assessment of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder among children in families and schools in Mediterranean and continental Croatian towns

Among one of the biggest difficulties in diagnosis and treatment of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) is firstly the involvement of different persons, especially parents and teachers, who, together with experts, make the unavoidable subjects in the process of detecting and treating children with AD/HD. Adding to that the standards of living environment, the process becomes even more complex. The aim of this research is to detect if there is a difference in the assessment of AD/HD, given by the parents and teachers in two urban areas, which have culturally and geographically different characteristics (Middle European and Mediterranean). The assessments of children’ s behavior were conducted in two randomly selected schools ; one in Zadar (Mediterranean town on the Adriatic coast) and the other in Zagreb (Middle European city). The children were evaluated by the experts using DSM IV as a gold standard, and by the parents and teachers using Conners rating scales. Analysis of results showed that there were differences in assessment of AD/HD among experts and parents/teachers, and among parents from two towns. Different results given by parents in Zadar and Zagreb, we reasoned, were obtained because of different sensitivity to the problems of hyperactive/impulsive/attention deficiency children's behavior.

attention deficiency; hyperactivity disorder; parents; teachers; urban surroundings; Zadar; Zagreb; transcultural Psychiatry

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