What are the dangers of not treating ADHD?

ADHD is the most common physical and mental problem in childhood. The prevalence of ADHD among Chinese school-age children is about 5%, and most of the children will have symptoms for many years. Moreover, such children are prone to emotional instability, which not only affects their academic performance, but also their future happiness. In addition, due to the characteristics of their symptoms, parents should not treat children with ADHD like normal children.

At present, there are about 15 to 20 million children with ADHD in my country. Because of the disease, they may be suffering from misunderstanding and isolation from people around them. Such children need the attention of parents and teachers. Do not arbitrarily label them as naughty, but help children with ADHD receive necessary treatment in time.

Attention disorders

This is the most important symptom of the disease. It is manifested in the difficulty in maintaining attention when listening to lectures, doing homework or other activities. It is easy to be distracted by external stimuli, or often switch from one activity to another. The patient cannot pay attention to details during activities and often makes mistakes due to carelessness. When talking to adults, he is absent-minded and seems to be listening but not listening. He often deliberately avoids or is unwilling to engage in tasks that require sustained concentration for a long time, such as classwork or homework, and cannot complete these homework or other assigned tasks on time. Patients are prone to losing things, often losing toys, school supplies or other personal belongings, and forgetting daily activity arrangements.

Learning Problems

Inattention affects classroom performance and academic performance. As the school year progresses, many children with ADHD "run aground," falling behind each week until the gap is so big that they can no longer catch up. Inattention often attracts attention when children are in the third grade and seek treatment in the hospital. Because third grade is the time when children with ADHD most often "run aground," it is generally believed that third graders can complete more and more tasks independently, so their homework load increases. Many children also seek treatment after graduating from elementary school and entering middle school, because at this time the amount of courses and teachers have increased, and many children with ADHD who were able to keep up in elementary school are completely unable to adapt after entering middle school.

Emotional instability

About 20% of children with ADHD may experience severe and intense emotional episodes, impulsively disregarding the consequences, and bursting into physical or verbal aggressive behaviors, which seriously affect their daily lives and interpersonal relationships. The comorbidity rate of ADHD and mood disorders (also known as affective disorders) is 15% to 75%. Some children with ADHD and comorbid mood disorders experience depression for several hours a day, which can last for 2 weeks or more. During this time, they have slow reactions, drowsiness, and difficulty concentrating, which leads to giving up learning. ADHD is also often comorbid with emotional disorders, and children with ADHD show inferiority complex, shyness, social withdrawal, anxiety, crying, allergies, depression, etc.

Hyperactivity and impulsivity

The patient often appears to be very restless, with many small movements of the hands and feet, twisting and turning in the seat, leaving the seat without permission in the classroom or other occasions requiring quietness, running around or climbing everywhere, and having difficulty engaging in quiet activities or games, as if he is particularly energetic. He lacks thinking before taking action, does not consider the consequences, and acts on a temporary interest. For this reason, he often fights or disputes with his peers, resulting in adverse consequences. He talks a lot in any occasion, interrupts or interrupts others when they are talking, and can't wait to answer the teacher's question before he finishes it. He will also rashly disrupt his peers' games or be unable to wait in line patiently. He is emotionally unstable, easily overexcited, and easily depressed or rebellious and aggressive due to frustration. Demands must be met immediately, otherwise he will cry and lose his temper.

Confrontation and conduct issues

Hyperactivity and impulsivity may cause children with ADHD to often break school discipline, family rules or interpersonal communication rules, and are more likely to get into trouble than children with only inattention. Obviously, more of them have combined confrontation and conduct problems, including refusing to obey or actively defying adults' requests, irritability, temper tantrums, resentment or revenge, hostility, dissatisfaction, and even stealing, truancy, running away from home, lying, arson, animal abuse, bullying and other aggressive and destructive behaviors.

Neurological and psychiatric developmental abnormalities

The patients have poor development of fine motor skills, coordinated movements, and spatial position sense. For example, they are not flexible in turning their hands, finger movements, shoe lacing, and buttoning, and they have difficulty distinguishing left from right. A small number of patients have problems such as delayed language development, poor language expression, and low intelligence. Intelligence tests show that some patients have low IQs, with verbal IQs higher than operational IQs, and low scores on the attention subscale.