Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ???

[Horwood Beer-Master]

My Nephew seems to fluctuate wildly between being totally fixated on something, and wildly randomly running about playing with whichever toy or other object passes before his vision.

Mind you, he's not even two yet, this may just be normal behaviour...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You know, asthma used to be considered a purely psychological condition. In It the asthmatic boy gets an inhaler of plain water with a drop of camphor from his pharmacist. More work on the subject proved otherwise.

bad example... in IT, the boy seems to really be suffering from a psycho somatic problem, and I know that stress has been known to cause bouts of asthma with me, or make them worse.

It an example of the thinking of the time, I wasn't using Stephen King to validate a scientific process.

[Ronja]

You know, asthma used to be considered a purely psychological condition.

Also allergies, especially allergic conjunctivitis and urticaria, used to be blamed on psychological imbalance (maternal rejection having been one favorite hypothesis), before the functions of histamine and H1 receptors were understood.

[camoguard]

I think attention disorders along with many pathologies are real. And I think being able to detect them better is a hallmark of progress. Of course as we get more disorder detectors, I expect there will be more misdiagnoses along the way. Mistakes will happen.

[Feck]

It is often talked about when the child is just a pure little shit but I know people that have it and they are different ,often very different to siblings .
I've had friends come live with me because their families couldn't cope .

[Ronja]

ADHD is overdiagnosed. Some kids are just little bastards

It may well be over -diagnosed, but I have seen kids whose diagnosis, and subsequent Ritalin prescriptions, worked absolute wonders.

Personally, I was nigh resigned that I would never be able to graduate as B.Sc., as some of the courses just were "impossible" for me to pass. Then I got the diagnosis ADHD at age 40, read a bunch of books about it, rearranged my school schedule around optimizing every day's classes towards concentrating on one or two subjects (instead of as short days as possible), got some coaching, an extra hour for each exam, and finally, Ritalin. I passed my last B.Sc. course ten days before I turn 47. It was tough, but it became doable.

The likely primary cause of my ADHD was lack of oxygen during birth (I'm a firstborn - we are over-represented in the ADHD population).