Primary Healthcare

Biography

Biography: Nezla Duric

Abstract

ADHD is one of the largest groups in psychiatric health care for children and adolescents in Norway. Early recognition and diagnosis, proper organization and appropriate treatment have a positive effect on the self-esteem and development of the child as well as probable socioeconomic benefits for society. The need for mental health support for ADHD children is one of the upcoming issues and needs to address whether the detection and treatment can be given to primary health care (PHC). Different treatment approaches aimed at improving ADHD core symptoms have been assessed. Despite the beneficial effects of most treatment approaches, existing problems with those that do not respond well to treatment or have adverse drug reactions, call for alternative or complementary treatments. A randomized controlled clinical study was performed to explore the ability of PHC to identify ADHD symptoms and to evaluate the use of short and long-term efficacy of standard stimulant medication and neurofeedback as the single and multimodal treatment to treat ADHD in children and adolescents. The high referral rate and low incidence of ADHD-diagnosed children and adolescents at the Child Adolescent Mental Health Clinic demonstrated a need to improve the understanding of ADHD in PHC. Pre-referral screenings and additional screening guidelines in the community and PHC environments is recommended. Findings provide new evidence for the long-term efficacy of multimodal treatment of stimulant medication and NF. However, more research is needed to explore if multimodal treatment is suitable for ADHD children and adolescents with insufficiently response to single MED treatment.