The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the chronological age of one's diagnosis and dysfunctional career thoughts among college students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. What is currently known about the timing of ADHD diagnosis and how it could potentially impact or have an effect on one's career thoughts as it pertains to making educational and career decisions is nonexistent. Given the increase of ADHD among college students, it was worth exploring the impact that age of one's diagnosis has on career thoughts. / Ph. D.

How teachers teach children with attention difficulties. This is a qualitative interview based on the experiences of four teachers. I want this study to examine teachers' experience and views about ADHD diagnosis. I would also like to find out what teachers do and think about the practice which surrounds students with ADHD. How to formulate and think of four active teachers about ADHD? What are the implications of the diagnosis perceive the four teachers interviewed that the diagnosis must for students? Among the measures that consider the four teachers interviewed are most effective for students with ADHD because they provide an equal education?   Those questions are addressed to specifically learn about how they proceed in their activities. The interview responses, I have compiled and compared with literature highlighting subject. Results the study shows that there are many similarities in the teachers' treatment of children with ADHD. A similarity which consists of teachers have a common approach, a clear structure with clear limits and procedures and that they clear up activities for children with ADHD. The teachers mentioned that it is important to adapt the environment to facilitate and help children with concentration problems. All four teachers interviewed believe they have a good training for dealing with concentration difficulties, but that they need continuous training. Data used in this study is qualitative. The selection of teachers has been through recommendations and personal knowledge

Syftet med det här examensarbetet är att som lärare få en inblick i hur det är att få en elev med diagnosen Adhd i sin klass. Jag vill att arbetet skall belysa olika pedagogiska sätt att ta hand om och lära dessa elever att klara sin skoldag och att få en meningsfull utbildning Intresset för detta ämne startade då man inom skolan och även utanför skolan pratar om att dessa elever får för lite hjälp för att klara av sin skoltid För att få hjälp med denna undersökning har jag intervjuat både skolpersonal och elever. Resultatet av mina intervjuer har gett mig många svar på hur jag bör undervisa och ta hand om dessa elever och även att den personal som jag har intervjuat lägger oerhört mycket tid och kraft för att hjälpa dem. Som exempel kan nämnas att Adhd -eleven behöver tydliga, avgränsade instruktioner gärna med bilder och tillhörande text för att lättare komma ihåg dem. Elevens vardag skall ha en klar och riktig struktur med skoldagens aktiviteter på ordnade scheman som tydligt visar vad eleven skall göra och vara. I mina litteraturstudier har jag samlat in fakta angående hur Adhd påverkar människan, hur man kan hjälpa dem att få en bättre vardag och hur man kan verka i skolan. / The purpose of this thesis is, as a teacher, to get an insight into what it is like to have a student diagnosed with Adhd in ones class. I want this work to show various educational ways to care for and teach these students to meet their school day and to get a meaningful education. Interest in this subject started when we in school and outside school are talking about these students geting too little help to cope with their education. In this investigation, I have interviewed both school staff and students. The result of my interviews has given me many answers to how I should teach and take care of these students. The staff I interviewed are also using enormous time and effort to help them. As an example, the Adhd students need clear, distinct instructions preferably with photographs and accompanying text to more easaly remember them. Pupil's everyday will have a clear and accurate structure of the school day's activities in schedules that clearly shows what the student should do and where to be. In my literature studie I have collected the facts about how ADHD affects people, how to help them gain a better everyday life and how to be the school.

Att lyckas i skolan är den viktigaste faktorn för att också lyckas i livet och är än mer viktig för elever som har diagnosen adhd, eftersom de har större risk att hamna i en negativ livsspiral. Skolan har ett kompensatoriskt uppdrag och specialpedagogen kan vara en viktig del i att hjälpa till med att skapa en integrerad och bra lärmiljö för elever med diagnosen adhd. Elevhälsoarbetet i skolan förutsätter en hög grad av samverkan med olika interna och externa aktörer. Barn- och ungdomspsykiatrin är en av dessa. Syftet med denna studie är att belysa personalens beskrivningar av framgångsfaktorer och utmaningar i samarbetet mellan personal, på barn- och ungdomspsykiatrin och skolors elevhälsa, för att kunna stödja elever som har diagnosen adhd i deras utveckling och lärande. Den här kvalitativa studien bygger på intervjuer med personal från dessa verksamheter. Intervjuerna bestod av både fokusgruppsintervjuer och individuella semistrukturerade intervjuer. Intervjuerna transkriberades och sammanställdes utifrån studiens frågeställningar. Studiens urval var målinriktad och gjordes enligt bekvämlighetsprincipen. Informanterna från elevhälsan arbetade i en glesbygdskommun och deltagarna från barn- och ungdomspsykiatrin var verksamma i en stad men samverkar med informanterna i elevhälsan. Resultatet i studien visar att både skolan och barn- och ungdomspsykiatrin tycker att samverkan och samarbete mellan parterna är viktiga och nödvändiga. De största utmaningarna i samverkan tycks vara otydliga ramar för hur samarbetet ska fungera och oklarheter kring de olika professionernas uppdrag. De långa väntetiderna till barn- och ungdomspsykiatrin skapar också oro vid samverkan. I studien framkom också att samverkan i glesbygdskommuner innebär försvårande omständigheter. Resultatet tyder på att tydligare samverkansavtal bör arbetas fram och att all berörd personal bör göras delaktiga. / Success in school is the most important factor for success in life, and it is even more important for students with an ADHD-diagnosis, since they are in more danger of developing a negative spiral in life. Education has a compensatory duty and teachers in special education can be an important part in helping to create an integrated and meaningful learning environment for students with an ADHD-diagnosis. The work with the student health team within a school demands a high degree of cooperation between different internal and external players. BUP (child and adolescent psychiatry), which provides specialist care for children with mental health problems, is one of these players. The intention of this paper is to illustrate the personnel’s descriptions of not only the factors for success but the challenges as well, when it comes to the cooperation between the school´s student health team and BUP´s work to support students with the ADHD-diagnosis with their development and their learning. This qualitative study is based on interviews with personnel from these different arenas. The interviews where made with both focus groups, as well as semi structured interviews. The interviews where transcribed and compiled based on the intentions of this study. The selection was targeted and made according to the comfort principle. The informants from the student health team worked in a rural municipality, while the participants from BUP where based in a nearby city, but worked with the informants from the student health team. The result of the study shows that the school, as well as, BUP believes that cooperation and collaboration between these different arenas are important and necessary. The main challenges seem to be the lack of a defined framework that specifies how the cooperation should work as well as confusion about the responsibilities of the different professions. The long wait to BUP is also a cause for concern while striving for cooperation. The study also showed that cooperation within rural municipalities involves complicating circumstances. The result indicates that more clearly defined frameworks for cooperation should be developed and that all concerned personnel should be involved.

The diagnostic process of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is complex and relies on criteria sensitive to subjective biases. This may cause significant delays in appropriate treatment initiation. An automated analysis relying on subjective and objective measures might not only simplify the diagnostic process and reduce the time to diagnosis, but also improve reproducibility. While recent machine learning studies have succeeded at distinguishing ADHD from healthy controls, the clinical process requires differentiating among other or multiple psychiatric conditions. We trained a linear support vector machine (SVM) classifier to detect participants with ADHD in a population showing a broad spectrum of psychiatric conditions using anonymized data from clinical records (N = 299 participants). We differentiated children and adolescents with ADHD from those not having the condition with an accuracy of 66.1%. SVM using single features showed slight differences between features and overlapping standard deviations of the achieved accuracies. An automated feature selection achieved the best performance using a combination 19 features. Real-world clinical data from medical records can be used to automatically identify individuals with ADHD among help-seeking individuals using machine learning. The relevant diagnostic information can be reduced using an automated feature selection without loss of performance. A broad combination of symptoms across different domains, rather than specific domains, seems to indicate an ADHD diagnosis.

La présente thèse de doctorat visait d’abord à valider les résultats des études antérieures démontrant un accroissement de la prévalence des problèmes de santé mentale et ensuite, à évaluer l’importance du contexte social dans l’explication des changements de prévalence, à partir des effets d’âge, de période et de cohorte. L’atteinte de ces objectifs s’est faite à partir de deux études empiriques, chacune ciblant sa propre problématique en santé mentale. La première étude, basée sur les données de l’Enquête longitudinale nationale sur les enfants et les jeunes (ELNEJ) de Statistique Canada, a permis de conclure à un accroissement réel de la prévalence du diagnostic de trouble déficitaire de l’attention/hyperactivité (TDA/H) et de la consommation de psychostimulants chez les enfants canadiens entre 1994 et 2007. Toutefois, cette tendance n’est ni constante, ni universelle, puisque des effets de période et d’âge apparaissent clairement : l’augmentation des prévalences est uniquement remarquée dans les années 2000, et survient seulement chez les enfants d’âge scolaire. L’identification d’inégalités de prévalence dues à la période historique et à l’âge des enfants souligne l’importance du contexte social dans la problématique du diagnostic de TDA/H et de la consommation de psychostimulants. La seconde étude a été réalisée à partir des données du Panel Study of Belgian Households (PSBH) et cherchait à expliquer l’accroissement des symptômes dépressifs observé ces vingt dernières années chez les adultes belges. L’utilisation de l’analyse multiniveaux longitudinale permettant la distinction des effets d’âge et des effets de cohortes a été privilégiée. Bien que l’intensité des symptômes dépressifs ait varié de manière relativement importante chez les individus au cours des années 1990, nos conclusions démontrent que les symptômes auto-rapportés de dépression sont davantage associés aux conditions de vie, qu’à la personnalité. L’augmentation résulte d’un effet de la succession des cohortes, où les individus des cohortes les plus récentes rapportent toujours une plus grande intensité de symptômes dépressifs que les individus des cohortes précédentes. Les membres d’une même cohorte de naissance partagent donc des expériences communes à un âge similaire, ce qui a un impact durable sur leurs comportements et sur leur santé mentale. De manière générale, les résultats des deux articles empiriques ont, chacun à leur manière, confirmé la réalité de l’accroissement des problèmes de santé mentale dans les sociétés occidentales contemporaines, et permis de constater que la prévalence diffère selon l’âge et la cohorte de naissance des individus, ainsi que selon la période historique, renforçant ainsi l’hypothèse de l’importance des facteurs sociaux dans l’étiologie des problèmes de santé mentale. Bien que la nature de ces facteurs n’ait pu être testée de manière directe, de nombreuses explications sociales furent tout de même proposées. À cet égard, des changements dans les normes comportementales associées à l’âge, dans les normes sociales, dans la conceptualisation des troubles mentaux, des modifications dans la sphère éducative, ainsi que des innovations pharmacologiques, médicales et technologiques constituent des explications sociales aux effets d’âge, de période et de cohorte qui ont été observés. / This doctoral dissertation aimed to validate findings from previous studies indicating an increase in the prevalence of mental health problems, and to evaluate the importance of contextual factors in explaining this increase in prevalence. Age, period and cohort effects were considered proxies for social context factors. These objectives were achieved through two empirical studies, each one focusing on a specific mental health problem. The first study analyzed data from the Statistics Canada National longitudinal survey on children and youth (NLSCY) and found significant increase in the prevalence of Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis and the prescription of ADHD medications for Canadian children between 1994 and 2007. However, this tendency was not constant, or linear, as some period and age effects were found: an increase in prevalence was found only during the 2000s, and only for school-age children. These differences in prevalence rate by historical period and children’s age underline the importance of the social context in the diagnosing of ADHD diagnosis and prescription of ADHD medications. The second study used the data from the Panel Study of Belgian Households (PSBH) and aimed to explain the increase of depressive symptoms observed recently among Belgian adults. A longitudinal multilevel analysis, allowing for the disentanglement of age and cohort effects, was conducted. Our findings demonstrate that, despite a variation in the intensity of depressive symptoms within individuals during the 1990s, self-reported symptoms are mostly associated with a reaction to life conditions rather than with personality. The increase over time results from an effect of cohort succession, where individuals from the most recent cohort always report more depressive symptoms than individuals from the oldest cohorts. Members from the same cohort share common experiences at a similar age, which has a durable impact on their behaviors and mental health. In general, results from our two empirical studies confirmed, each in their own way, that mental health problems have increased in contemporary Western societies. Moreover, findings demonstrated that prevalence differs according to age, birth cohort and historical period, thus reinforcing the importance of social factors in the etiology of mental health problems. Although the true nature of these social factors could not be directly examined, many social explanations were proposed. For example, the changes in behavioral norms associated with age, social norms, the conceptualization of mental health problems, and to the school system, as well as innovations in pharmacological, medical and technological fields across this period are all potential factors explaining these age, period and cohort effects.

La présente thèse de doctorat visait d’abord à valider les résultats des études antérieures démontrant un accroissement de la prévalence des problèmes de santé mentale et ensuite, à évaluer l’importance du contexte social dans l’explication des changements de prévalence, à partir des effets d’âge, de période et de cohorte. L’atteinte de ces objectifs s’est faite à partir de deux études empiriques, chacune ciblant sa propre problématique en santé mentale. La première étude, basée sur les données de l’Enquête longitudinale nationale sur les enfants et les jeunes (ELNEJ) de Statistique Canada, a permis de conclure à un accroissement réel de la prévalence du diagnostic de trouble déficitaire de l’attention/hyperactivité (TDA/H) et de la consommation de psychostimulants chez les enfants canadiens entre 1994 et 2007. Toutefois, cette tendance n’est ni constante, ni universelle, puisque des effets de période et d’âge apparaissent clairement : l’augmentation des prévalences est uniquement remarquée dans les années 2000, et survient seulement chez les enfants d’âge scolaire. L’identification d’inégalités de prévalence dues à la période historique et à l’âge des enfants souligne l’importance du contexte social dans la problématique du diagnostic de TDA/H et de la consommation de psychostimulants. La seconde étude a été réalisée à partir des données du Panel Study of Belgian Households (PSBH) et cherchait à expliquer l’accroissement des symptômes dépressifs observé ces vingt dernières années chez les adultes belges. L’utilisation de l’analyse multiniveaux longitudinale permettant la distinction des effets d’âge et des effets de cohortes a été privilégiée. Bien que l’intensité des symptômes dépressifs ait varié de manière relativement importante chez les individus au cours des années 1990, nos conclusions démontrent que les symptômes auto-rapportés de dépression sont davantage associés aux conditions de vie, qu’à la personnalité. L’augmentation résulte d’un effet de la succession des cohortes, où les individus des cohortes les plus récentes rapportent toujours une plus grande intensité de symptômes dépressifs que les individus des cohortes précédentes. Les membres d’une même cohorte de naissance partagent donc des expériences communes à un âge similaire, ce qui a un impact durable sur leurs comportements et sur leur santé mentale. De manière générale, les résultats des deux articles empiriques ont, chacun à leur manière, confirmé la réalité de l’accroissement des problèmes de santé mentale dans les sociétés occidentales contemporaines, et permis de constater que la prévalence diffère selon l’âge et la cohorte de naissance des individus, ainsi que selon la période historique, renforçant ainsi l’hypothèse de l’importance des facteurs sociaux dans l’étiologie des problèmes de santé mentale. Bien que la nature de ces facteurs n’ait pu être testée de manière directe, de nombreuses explications sociales furent tout de même proposées. À cet égard, des changements dans les normes comportementales associées à l’âge, dans les normes sociales, dans la conceptualisation des troubles mentaux, des modifications dans la sphère éducative, ainsi que des innovations pharmacologiques, médicales et technologiques constituent des explications sociales aux effets d’âge, de période et de cohorte qui ont été observés. / This doctoral dissertation aimed to validate findings from previous studies indicating an increase in the prevalence of mental health problems, and to evaluate the importance of contextual factors in explaining this increase in prevalence. Age, period and cohort effects were considered proxies for social context factors. These objectives were achieved through two empirical studies, each one focusing on a specific mental health problem. The first study analyzed data from the Statistics Canada National longitudinal survey on children and youth (NLSCY) and found significant increase in the prevalence of Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis and the prescription of ADHD medications for Canadian children between 1994 and 2007. However, this tendency was not constant, or linear, as some period and age effects were found: an increase in prevalence was found only during the 2000s, and only for school-age children. These differences in prevalence rate by historical period and children’s age underline the importance of the social context in the diagnosing of ADHD diagnosis and prescription of ADHD medications. The second study used the data from the Panel Study of Belgian Households (PSBH) and aimed to explain the increase of depressive symptoms observed recently among Belgian adults. A longitudinal multilevel analysis, allowing for the disentanglement of age and cohort effects, was conducted. Our findings demonstrate that, despite a variation in the intensity of depressive symptoms within individuals during the 1990s, self-reported symptoms are mostly associated with a reaction to life conditions rather than with personality. The increase over time results from an effect of cohort succession, where individuals from the most recent cohort always report more depressive symptoms than individuals from the oldest cohorts. Members from the same cohort share common experiences at a similar age, which has a durable impact on their behaviors and mental health. In general, results from our two empirical studies confirmed, each in their own way, that mental health problems have increased in contemporary Western societies. Moreover, findings demonstrated that prevalence differs according to age, birth cohort and historical period, thus reinforcing the importance of social factors in the etiology of mental health problems. Although the true nature of these social factors could not be directly examined, many social explanations were proposed. For example, the changes in behavioral norms associated with age, social norms, the conceptualization of mental health problems, and to the school system, as well as innovations in pharmacological, medical and technological fields across this period are all potential factors explaining these age, period and cohort effects.