Prevalence and current treatment of attention deficit – hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in Lithuania primary school pupils

Abstract

The goal of a study was to es tab lish the prev a lence of at ten - tion def i cit – hy per ac tiv ity dis or der (ADHD) in the pri mary school chil dren in Lith u a nia and to eval u ate what treat ment is cur rently pro vided for them. Par ents and teach ers of all pu - pils of 12 ran domly se lected pri mary schools (N=2942) com pleted the scales on the pres ents of ADHD symp toms in their chil dren. ADHD was di ag nosed if at least 6 symp toms of hy per ac tiv ity and/or 6 symp toms of in at ten tion were pres ent for at least 6 months ac cord ing re ports of par ents and the re - sult of CAP scale com pleted by teach ers ex ceeded the norms for age and gen der. Re sults of the both scales were ob tained for 2298 pu pils – 1096 girls and 1202 boys 6–12 years of age. ADHD was di ag nosed for 5.2% of pri mary school pu pils. It was 1.9 times more fre quent among boys than among girls. There was no sig nif i cant dif fer ence be - tween the four grades in the in ci dence of ADHD in gen eral but there was a re la tion ship be tween the age of the pu pils and the prev a lent type of ADHD. Sta tis ti cally sig nif i cant re la - tion ship was es tab lished be tween ADHD and worse achieve - ments in learn ing, prob lems in com mu ni ca tions with peers and par ents, oppositional de fi ant be hav ior. 51% per cent of the par ents of ADHD di ag nosed chil dren have had ap plied to the men tal health care pro fes sion als, most of them eval u - ated the help they re ceived as just partly use ful (57.1%) or not use ful at all (24.5%). Most of those chil dren had re ceived one con sul ta tion of a spe cial ist (17.3%), were of fered just psy cho ther apy / be hav ioral ther apy (16.3%) or just pharmaco therapy (8.1%). Only 5.1% of them had re ceived com plex treat ment.