Chances are, you know someone whose child has been diagnosed with attention-deficit (hyperactivity) disorder. Perhaps you've received that news about yourself or your own child. In many cases, it's a legitimate issue and can require medication, therapy or both. But in my experience, ADHD is sometimes a diagnosis that can be mistakenly given based on a pattern of behavior, without appropriate understanding of the underlying biology.
For many children, particularly those in low-income communities, their behavior issues are not really about underactivity of the brain's attentive function, the hallmark of ADHD. Rather, behavior is just one outward sign of a more significant health threat that doctors are just beginning to understand: toxic stress.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the term "toxic stress" describes the disruption in brain architecture and other developing organ systems that occur when a child is exposed to strong, frequent or prolonged adversity. Unlike ADHD, toxic stress involves many systems of the body and is characterized by a dramatic increase in stress-related disease and cognitive impairment.
[For more of this story, written by Nadine Burke Harris, go to http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/26/...harris-toxic-stress/]
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