ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: This study is to understand basic clinical characteristics, behavior symptoms, psychopathology, intelligence and neuropsychiatric functions of ADHD. METHODS: This study examined 1,432 outpatients with attention deficit or hyperactivity under 19 who had visited Yeung Nam University Psychiatric Center from July 01, 1998 to June 20, 2001 with K-ABC, K-WISC (or K-WAIS), K-PIC, ADDESHV, ACTeRS, CAP, SNAP, CPT and WCST RESULTS: 41.2% of the whole outpatients who visited clinics were diagnosed as having ADHD. 37.5% of the patients with ADHD had ADHD-I;59.8% had ADHD-C;and 2.7% had ADHD-HI. The proportion of males to females was 5.6 to 1. Females were a little younger and had generally lower functional standards including intellectual level than males (p<.001). The psychopathology through K-PIC showed that 23.8% of the subjects had psychopathologies related to language development and 18.5-26.5% of the subjects had other psychopathologies related to performance development, anxiety, delinquency, psychosis, autism. In behavioral symptom checklist, general difference was confirmed (p<.001), and ADHD subtype was differentiated by behavioral symptom checklist, especially ADDES-HV and ACTeRS (p<.05). In intellectual level, children with ADHD showed significantly lower IQ than normal children (p<.001). It raised questions that there can be problems not only in the course of testing IQs of children with ADHD but in development and display their intellectual abilities. And children with ADHD showed significantly poorer attention and performance abilities than normal children (p<.05). CONCLUSION: With above results, this study could confirm that ADHD-C had the largest percentage among subtypes of ADHD. And though the proportion of female patients was low, their functional standards were generally lower than male patients. Besides co-existent psychiatric diseases can be ignored in diagnosing ADHD. Though specific differences among subtypes have not been discovered, children with ADHD showed significantly lower functional standards such as IQ, attention, and performance abilities than normal children.