Ketty Hagmann & Lotta Beskow MAIN FIELD OF WORK
Ketty Hagmann is a psychologist and psychotherapist and Lotta Beskow is a Child and Adolescent psychiatrist and psychotherapist. Both work clinically at BUP (Barn och ungdoms psykiatri) in Ystad, Sweden where they have for a number of years assessed and treated children with ADHD diagnoses.
ABSTRACT
Systemic perspective in meeting families with ADHD
The diagnosis ADHD has increasingly become a focus of attention when looking at difficulties that affect children and their families. Information given about the diagnosis ADHD, both for the professional helpers as well as for patients is often oversimplified and describes the child’s behaviour from a biological perspective.
We were interested in examining what understanding the parents of children who had received the ADHD diagnosis had of the causes of ADHD, and to the possible effect this had on their subsequent choice of treatment for their child and for their family. In order to examine this we devised a questionnaire-based study directed to parents of children with an ADHD diagnosis. We found that the parents had a complex and layered view of what causes ADHD. Their interest for which treatment model was most relevant was influenced more by their own and by their child’s perceived state of health and goals of treatment rather than to an understanding of what leads to ADHD.
With consideration to the parents’ responses to our study and with reference to our own research we concluded that it was beneficial to be able to observe the wider context and to have an interest in the family’s situation regarding their objectives and motivation, its sense of well-being and an understanding of the behaviour that expresses itself within a diagnosis of ADHD.
Families need to be introduced to perspectives other than that of just the biological rationale of ADHD, which may not at all correspond to the parents more complex and layered understanding, and thus be unhelpful.
Proposals are made for how an understanding based on developmental psychology together with the stress-vulnerability model can be used to generate ideas for themes and to the direction of the treatment.
We advocate a systemic perspective in meeting these families.