Are children overdiagnosed with attention deficit disorder?
Children and Attention Deficit Disorder Attention Deficit Disorder is defined as a marked inability to concentrate and to remain focused on task. ADD effects between 3 and 5 percent of all school aged children. In a classroom of thirty children, this would translate into one student being diagnosed with ADD. As any teacher can tell you, there is more than one student in the class diagnosed with ADD. In fact it is likely that in a class of 30 students, 5 of them will have the diagnosis of ADD. Most likely four of the five will be boys. This statistic means that 16 percent of the children in the classroom have ADD, a clear indication that ADD as a whole is diagnosed too often. There are many reasons that children are unable to concentrate or remain focused in school. We, as a society spend many more hours in front of a television, computer screen or video game console than ever before. Playing video games stimulates children, increasing their agitation and excitability. A lack of exercis
