Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › What ADHD actually is
Before you decide who in front of you looks like ADHD, notice the picture you are already carrying. The loud boy gets sent for assessment and the quiet, drifting girl often does not.
The research on how race affects who gets diagnosed is genuinely mixed, and it is more honest to read the studies than to adopt a position from a summary. What you can do meanwhile is check your own base rates: whether you read the same behaviour as defiance in one child and inattention in another, and whether the quiet ones on your caseload have ever been asked.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Do not assert your own goodness: He knows best who is mindful of Him (Quran 53:32). Holding your own judgement loosely is the safer stance when you are deciding about someone else.
ٱلَّذِينَ يَجۡتَنِبُونَ كَبَٰٓئِرَ ٱلۡإِثۡمِ وَٱلۡفَوَٰحِشَ إِلَّا ٱللَّمَمَۚ إِنَّ رَبَّكَ وَٰسِعُ ٱلۡمَغۡفِرَةِۚ هُوَ أَعۡلَمُ بِكُمۡ إِذۡ أَنشَأَكُم مِّنَ ٱلۡأَرۡضِ وَإِذۡ أَنتُمۡ أَجِنَّةࣱ فِي بُطُونِ أُمَّهَٰتِكُمۡۖ فَلَا تُزَكُّوٓاْ أَنفُسَكُمۡۖ هُوَ أَعۡلَمُ بِمَنِ ٱتَّقَىٰٓ
As for those who avoid grave sins and foul acts, though they may commit small sins, your Lord is ample in forgiveness. He has been aware of you from the time He produced you from the earth and from your hiding places in your mothers’ wombs, so do not assert your own goodness:He knows best who is mindful of Him
Qur’an 53:32read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A review of gender differences reports that girls diagnosed with ADHD are more often of the predominantly inattentive presentation than boys, which helps explain why quieter girls go unnoticed. A later research review sets out how far females have been understudied in this field and which forces have limited awareness in girls and women. Both describe patterns across the literature rather than measuring bias in any one clinic.
Rucklidge JJ. (2010). Gender differences in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.. The Psychiatric clinics of North America doi
Hinshaw SP, Nguyen PT, O'Grady SM, Rosenthal EA. (2022). Annual Research Review: Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in girls and women: underrepresentation, longitudinal processes, and key directions.. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Referral depends on who gets noticed, so an unexamined mental picture decides who is ever looked at.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
ADHD is not only about focus. Physical health tends to drift down the list, and appointments, sleep, food and movement are exactly the sort of thing this condition makes hard to keep up with.
Not knowing a child's family history is not evidence against ADHD. Where a child is adopted, a blank family history should keep the question open rather than close it.
If sport or a club is the reason a struggling student still turns up, do not let it be the first thing taken away when grades slip. Removing it usually removes what was holding the rest together.