Comparison of self-esteem and quality of life in 8-12-year-old children with ADHD with and without learning disorders.

BACKGROUND: Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common disorders in school-aged children. Learning disorder (LD) is also one of the most important psychiatric disorders in children, which can often be associated with ADHD. In this study, we sought to compare self-esteem and quality of life in 8 to 12-year-old children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder with and without co-occurring learning disorders in order to emphasize the importance of attention and diagnosis in children with ADHD. METHOD: Among the 8- to 12-year-old outpatients referred to the child and adolescent psychiatry clinic of Omid Babol Clinic, 120 children aged 8 to 12 years with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder whose disease was diagnosed by a child and adolescent psychiatry subspecialist. Among the tools used to collect information was the Colorado Learning Difficulties Questionnaire by Wilcott et al. (CLDQ), five-scale self-esteem test of Pepe et al. (1989) for children and quality-of-life questionnaire for 8-12-year-old children (PedsQL). RESULTS: This study investigated self-esteem and quality of life in children with ADHD (n = 120, 51.7% boys). Children with ADHD and learning disabilities reported significantly lower self-esteem and quality of life compared to those with ADHD alone. CONCLUSION: Considering the relatively high probability of co-occurrence of ADHD and learning disorders, if one of them is diagnosed in a child, it is possible to look for other disorders in the child in order to avoid the more severe negative effects that this co-occurrence can have on the child by diagnosing it as soon as possible.

Comparison of serum vitamin D levels between healthy and ADHD children.

Background: The most common psychiatric disorder in childhood is Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Researchers have studied the effects of micronutrients on ADHD in recent years, but vitamin D (vit D) deficiency has received less attention. In this study, serum vit D levels were compared between healthy and ADHD children. Methods: This case-control study was carried out, in 2020, on 6-to-12-years-old children. There were 45 children with ADHD in the case group and 45 healthy children in the control group. Intravenous blood samples were taken from each child to measure serum vitamin D levels. A p-value < 0.05 was considered as significant. Results: Mean serum vit D levels in children with ADHD (17.34±8.37 ng / ml) were significantly lower than those in the control group (23.02±10.97 ng / ml) (P= 0.007). There were no significant differences in mean serum levels of vit D due to ADHD subtypes. Mean serum vit D levels were not significantly associated with the gender of children with ADHD. There was an inverse correlation between vit D levels and the severity of ADHD, but it was not statistically significant. Conclusion: The present study showed that children with ADHD had significantly lower serum vit D levels than healthy controls.

Phonological development in first language Laki-speaking children aged 3 to 5 years: A pilot study.

PURPOSE: To date there are no studies of speech sound acquisition in Laki, a language spoken in western regions of Iran. Thus, we set out a pilot study to investigate the speech development of 56 first language Laki-speaking children (aged 3-5 years). METHOD: Single words were elicited through a picture naming test specifically developed for this study. After recording and transcribing of speech samples, percentage of consonants correct (PCC), percentage of vowels correct (PVC), and proportion of whole word proximity (PWP) were documented in four age groups (36-41, 42-47, 48-53, and 54-59 months) and both genders. Children's phonetic inventories and consonant and vowel accuracy were also described. RESULT: All the sounds were considered as emerging by 53 months of age. For speech sound accuracy, all the speech sounds except /ɢ, z, ŋ, ʒ/ were mastered by 5 years. The effect of age on PCC values was significant. Also, age groups showed significant differences for PWP but were not significant for PVC. Boys and girls did not differ for PCC, PVC, and PWP values. CONCLUSION: From a theoretical perspective, findings contribute to theories about phonological acquisition in general and will enable crosslinguistic comparisons. From an applied standpoint, language-specific characteristics are identified, which are much needed for clinical practice with Laki-speaking children.