About ADHD Symptoms

Video Transcript

"I'm Dr. David Thomas. I'm a practicing psychotherapist in Tampa, Florida with Whitford Thomas Group to speak to you today about ADHD. ADHD is attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder. Really comes in two different areas here. If you split it in the middle there, attention-deficit, is just kind of how it's described, is a inattentiveness. The other piece, the hyperactivity, is really associated more with behavior and the area of impulsivity. ADHD is usually diagnosed with children ages seven and above. Adults also experience attention-deficit and often times are not diagnosed but still display a lot of the symptoms post-eighteen years old. When we look at attention-deficit, the inattentiveness, some of the characteristics of that or some of the symptoms that we look at are the inability to attend to various stimuli, certainly with young people it may come out in the area of difficulty following orders, taking instructions, a lot of carelessness. Also, when we look at inattentiveness the ability to stay on task, to stay focused, often times with test taking it becomes very difficult, sitting for prolonged periods of time. When you're looking at the other side of attention-deficit-hyperactivity, is the behavior of hyperactivity. And this often times, you'll see in a young person, or an adult, difficulty in sitting still. Often times with younger folks what you see is, especially young kids, they tend to kind of get up and move around a lot, which normally isn't a problem unless everybody around them are kind of listening, staying quiet, kind of playing games and things of that sort. So the hyperactivity piece comes a lot in the fidgety-ness and things of that sort. But their both, the inattentiveness as well as the hyperactivity. I'm Dr. David Thomas speaking to you about attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder."