Prevalence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in a group of elementary school children

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine prevalence of three subtypes of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) including attention deficit type, hyperactivity type, and combined type in a group of elementary school children in Shiraz. Material & Methods: For this purpose 1311 students (644 boys and 667 girls) aged 7-12 years were recruited using cluster random sampling. The instrument used in this study was the SWAN questionnaire (Swanson, Schuck, Mann, Carlson, Hartman & Sergeant, 2004). Findings: The results revealed that 5% to 8.5% of elementary school children show symptoms of one of the subtypes of ADHD. The results also revealed that the prevalence of hyperactivity disorder decreased with age while the prevalence of attention deficit increased with age. The prevalence of hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder in boys was not significantly different than in girls. However, the prevalence of combined type of disorder was significantly higher in boys than in girls. In addition, mean scores of the attention deficit, hyperactivity and combined type of disorder were significantly different in different socio-economic groups. Conclusion: Prevalence of the subtypes of the disorder was different across age and gender and children with lower socio-economic status are in danger of higher mean scores in all subtypes of the disorder.