attention deficit disorder :: essays research papers

In 1917 and 1918 there was a worldwide outbreak of encephalitis. Many churlren showed attention deficit disorder like symptoms afterwards, leading doctors to further speculate that the disorder was the result of mental capacity damage, resulting in perhaps the first look ups for ADD, Post-Encephalitic Disorder and Minimal judgement Damage. When it was later learned that these children were not brain damaged after all, the name changed to Minimal Brain Dysfunction. In 1937 doctors first reported evidence that exhilarating medication helped relieve the symptoms of hyperactive children. These reports were generally ignored until the 1950s, when there was a rapid increase in the use of drug therapy in psychiatry. By the mid 1960s, stimulant medication had become a common discourse for hyperactivity. In 1960 Stella Chase and other researchers began to write about "hyperactive child syndrome," which they believed to have a biological, rather than environmental cause. In 19 65 the American psychiatrical Association established a diagnostic category for what was now called Hyperkinetic chemical reaction of Childhood. In spite of the work of Chase and others, this condition was still largely believed to be caused by the childs environment, rather than being biological in origin. As a result, poor parenting was often blamed for ADD behavior. Over the coterminous 15 years, research began to reveal the neurological origin of ADD. One of the galore(postnominal) who studied ADD in the 1970s was Canadian psychologist Virginia Douglas. She is credited with identifying four study characteristics of the syndrome deficits in attention and effort, impulsivity, problems in regulating arousal levels and a indigence for immediate reinforcement. It was largely due to Douglass work that in 1980 the American psychiatrical Association established a new diagnostic category, Attention shortage Disorder With or Without Hyperactivity. In 1987 the APA revised the name to Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder. more than recently, with growing