Attention Deficit

LONDON, UK: The Daily Telegraph reports of a highly controversial study indicating that parents of autistic children tend to be more highly educated than parents of children with other mental problems. Researchers found that 46% of parents of autistic children achieved a General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) compared to 35% parents of other children in the study. A GCSE is the name of a set of British examinations, usually taken by secondary school students.

The study, conducted by the Office for National Statistics, was an attempt to closely examine children with autism as well as to determine whether mental disorders were rising.

Researchers found that autistic children were also less likely to live in poor families. However, many autistic children live in families where neither parent worked. While only nine percent of parents with autistic children earned less than £200 per week, 20 percent of other children lived in homes with a weekly income of less than £200 per week.

Researchers suggested that the unusual combination of high educational status and low economic activity among parents of autistic children "reflects their heavy caring responsibilities."

Seven percent of US children are suspected of having ADHD while the British study indicates on two per cent had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and only one per cent had a less common disorder, such as autism. As is true in the US, boys were more likely to have a mental disorder than girls.

"The prevalence of mental disorders was also greater among children and young people in certain families, such as lone parent families (16 per cent) compared with two-parent families (eight per cent) and in step-families (14 per cent) compared with those with no stepchildren (nine per cent).

Dinah Morley, deputy director of Young Minds, the children’s mental health charity, said the figures were a wake-up call to the "tremendous cost" of divorce.

"We can’t turn the clock back to a time when all children stayed with their birth families," she said. "But we can start to be more aware that these things that adults do impact very deeply on children. I think it is a wake-up call to adults to be more aware when they decide to divorce of the tremendous cost to the children. It is important for society to think how in the future it is going to support children better."

However, statisticians emphasised that while there was a link between divorce and mental health problems in children, it was not clear whether the divorce followed the diagnosis of the mental problem or whether it may have triggered it in some way.

They added that mental health problems in children were also more common where the parent had no educational qualifications (17 per cent) compared with those who had a degree (four per cent) and where a parent was an unskilled manual worker (15 per cent) compared to a doctor or lawyer (four per cent).

One per cent of children aged 5-16 had autistic spectrum disorder.

The majority - 82 per cent - were boys. Almost all the children had a physical complaint as well (89 per cent compared with 54 per cent of other children).

Tim Loughton, the shadow Health Minister, said: "The Government urgently needs to make it easier to identify problems early on in schools and to provide appropriate treatment. That does not mean admission to adult wards or excessive reliance on the chemical cosh of drugs."

(Source: Daily Telegraph, September 1, 2005)