And any other carers that are involved in the child, need to have their input as well. So for the clinicians using multiple sources, and most paediatricians and psychiatrists, the vast majority are practising in this way now. We still hear a few anecdotes like that, but parents should demand a comprehensive assessment, and if they re not happy with the assessment they got, they shouldn t take the therapeutic advice, they should go elsewhere for a second opinion. However, my belief is that this sort of fancy testing is very unlikely to be helpful in a diagnostic fashion. Because we have to remember that these children are not qualititatively different from other children.
All children are impulsive at times, all children are inattentive and scatty at times.
These children are just at the more extreme end of the spectrum. They ve just got more of it than others. Dr Daryl Efron is a paediatrician in the Centre for Community Child Health at the Royal Children s Hospital in Melbourne. Efron D et al.