When students have difficulties in school, lack of attention is often noticed. We often assume that he/she has ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder). But ADHD is not the only cause of attentional issues. ADHD "imitators" include the following:
- Hearing deficit
- Vision deficit
- Age-appropriate over-activity
- Coordination
- Poor nutrition / malnutrition
- Vitamin deficiency
- Caffeine
- Self-esteem problems
- Speech and receptive language
- Developmental language impairment ~ speech or language delays
- Insufficient sleep (sleep disorder or environmental causes)
- Too much stuff in the bedroom (TV, video games, cell phones, etc.)
- Functional disorders
- Oppositional defiant disorder
- Conduct disorder
- Mood disorder
- Depression
- Dysthymia
- Anxiety disorder
- Realistic fears
- Personality disorder
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder
- PTSD
- Mania or bipolar disorder
- Adjustment disorder with disturbance of behavior
- Situation, environmental, or family problems
- Improper learning environment (unsafe, disruptive)
- Inappropriate school placement (e.g. gifted child, learning disabled, developmentally delayed child in regular classroom)
- Personality conflicts with teachers or peers
- Family psychosocial adversity
- Social disruption (poverty, divorce, moves, deaths, illness in family)
- Unstable / chaotic home setting
- Conflict
- Adult domestic violence
- Abuse, neglect, or both
- Poor parenting (e.g. inappropriate, inconsistent, punitive)
- Level of parental stress
- Parental absence
- Parental psychopathology
- Fetal alcohol syndrome
- Fragile x syndrome
- Lead blood level
- Thyroid deficiency
- Phenylketonuria
- Petite mal epilepsy
- Seizures
- Sequelae of head trauma
- Thyroid abnormality
- Learning disability
- Mental retardation
- Borderline intellectual functioning
- Frontal lobe abscess
- Neoplasm
- Lead toxicity
- Medication-induced e.g. antihistamines, beta-agonists, Phenobarbital
- Acute or chronic medical illness esp. asthma, allergic rhinitis, eczema, enuresis/encopresis
- Substance abuse (alcohol, OTC medication, illicit substances)
- Pervasive Developmental Disorder (Autism / Asperger's)
- Tourette's syndrome
- Multiple tic disorder