Children who suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have impaired brain function, most likely linked to a genetic condition occurring during pregnancy.

Researchers have uncovered conclusive evidence that key areas of the brain in ADHD sufferers do not develop as quickly as in those children without ADHD.

Professor Alasdair Vance, academic head of child psychiatry at the Royal Children's Hospital, said the areas were related to a child's ability to encode information, hold information and understand time and space.

"So their ability to read other people's body language, to pick up on the nuances of what their peer group are up to, would clearly be affected by the sort of developmental delays in brain development that we've identified," he said.

The research is about to be published in the world's leading biological psychiatry journal, Molecular Psychiatry, and Professor Van ...

In the first major study of the use of medications for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), researchers found that parents of children on ADHD drugs were nine times more likely than other parents to use the drugs as well. As well, they found that if at least one parent and child were taking an ADHD medication, a second child was more likely to do so, too.

Physicians have long understood that ADHD runs in families and the findings of this new study support what they see in their practices, but not without some surprising discoveries.

In families where a parent and child both began taking ADHD medications last year, nearly half the time the parent did so first, according to the study. According to Dr. Thomas E. Brown, associate director of the Yale Clinic for Attention and Related Disorders, “Usually it’s the kid first, then the par ...

The psychiatrist who identified attention deficit disorder - the condition blamed for the bad behaviour of hundreds of thousands of children - has admitted that many may not really be ill.

Dr Robert Spitzer said that up to 30 per cent of youngsters classified as suffering from disruptive and hyperactive conditions could have been misdiagnosed.

They may simply be showing perfectly normal signs of being happy or sad, he said.

'Many of these conditions might be normal reactions which are not really disorders,' he continued.

Dr Spitzer developed the bible of mental disorder classification in the 1970s and 1980s, which identified dozens of new conditions including ADD and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Since then hundreds of thousands of children have been diagnosed with ADD, a behavioural disorder linked to poor attention span, and ADHD, which adds an element of hyperactivity.

The ...

CHILDREN diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) should be reassessed, a Melbourne specialist has said following a report showing Australia was among the heaviest users of ADHD drugs.

The US study, headed by eminent health economics and public policy expert Richard Scheffler, found the use of drugs to treat ADHD had more than tripled worldwide since 1993.

Researchers at the University of California found Australia was among the heaviest users of drugs to treat ADHD.

Child and adolescent psychiatrist George Halasz, from the Monash Medical Centre in Melbourne, said the researchers found about 30 per cent of Australian children diagnosed with ADHD were misdiagnosed.

The study said one in 100 children were medicated for it.

The reason ADHD was often misdiagnosed was through a misunderstanding of the disorder, Mr Halasz ...