ADHD Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example

ADHD Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example

In the last 17 years, the prevalence of ADHD has increased significantly from 7.7% in 2003 to 9.4% in 2016 (CDC, 2020). Nonetiologic factors such as medical education efforts about ADHD aimed at improving access to healthcare services, changes in ADHD diagnostic criteria, increased public awareness, and improved referral services from community and primary care centers to more advanced and well-equipped health care facilities have increased the likelihood of ADHD screening and diagnosis (Xu et al., 2018). Altogether, these discoveries explain the higher numbers of reported ADHD diagnoses. (ADHD Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)

Etiologic factors are related to genetic, neurological, and environmental causes. These factors include age, gender, ethnicity, family income, and geographic region. For instance, children and adolescents aged between 4 and 17 and Hispanic have higher risks of developing ADHD than other age brackets and ethnicities (Xu et al., 2018). Children from low-income and non-English language-speaking families living in unsafe neighborhoods have higher risks of developing ADHD symptoms (Collins & Cleary, 2016). Moreover, aggressive behavior, parental mental health problems, immigration status, and generalized anxiety diagnosis exacerbate ADHD symptoms (Wüstner et al., 2019). However, appropriate pharmacological interventions, behavioral therapy, exercise, nutrition management, social skills training (Luo et al., 2019), social support, and improving family climate (Wüstner et al., 2019) can mitigate against the development of ADHD symptoms. (ADHD Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)

To differentiate a child from one diagnosed with ADHD, one must consider the condition’s effect on development. A child with ADHD has impaired functions and learning difficulty, thus, cannot perform like normal children. Such children have difficulty in processing information (Alqahtani et al., 2019), are easily frustrated and overwhelmed, have difficulty controlling emotions (Lugo-Candelas et al., 2017), and are less mature compared to their peers (Humphreys, Tottenham, & Lee, 2018). Besides, they have a low executive function, i.e., low attention span, lack recall ability, and poor at planning/organizing/prioritizing tasks (Pineda-Alhucema et al., 2018). (ADHD Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)