The Functional Assessment (ADHD)

Functional assessment in ADHD The functional assessment of ADHD classically includes a complete evaluation of information obtained from various reliable sources, together with family members, parents, carers, teachers, partners or colleagues, depending on how old the patients is. A group of qualified healthcare professionals can be involved in the diagnosis and assessment of ADHD, such as trained psychiatrists, nurses or psychologists (37,47).

The main aim in assessing a patient with ADHD is to determine the interventions that might be required when addressing complaints presented by a patient. The main concerns in majority cases are:

• The evaluation of complaints presented

• A thorough history of the complaints

• Formulating a differential

The functional assessment of ADHD shouldn’t only include the behaviour of a child but should also include parental psychological status, parent-child relationships and how the functioning of a marriage or couple is. (55)

Executive functions are associated to various groups of central cognitive functions playing a key role for people when managing numerous daily life tasks. Cognitive functions consist of six clusters that seem to be impaired in ADHD individuals.

Fig 3 (57) 1. Activation: materials and task organization, time management, task management, and preparing to start working on tasks. Individuals with ADHD express continual difficulty with excessive procrastination. These individuals are classically put off getting started on a task, even though a task might be very important to them, until the last minute. It is as if they cannot get themselves started until the point at which they view the task to be an acute

Effort: attentiveness being regulated, sustainable effort, and speed processing. The vast majority with ADHD imply that they’re capable of performing short term projects well but with more difficulty and sustained effort over longer periods of time. These individuals have also reported that they find it difficult to complete tasks on time, especially when required to write an essay. The majority experience continual difficulty regulating sleep and alertness. They usually end stay up too late because they cannot shut their head off. Once asleep, they go in to deep sleep and find it difficult waking up in the morning