Assessment of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder among children in families and schools in Mediterranean and continental Croatian towns.

Among one of the biggest difficulties in diagnosis and treatment of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) is firstly the involvement of different persons, especially parents and teachers, who, together with experts, make the unavoidable subjects in the process of detecting and treating children with AD/HD. Adding to that the standards of living environment, the process becomes even more complex. The aim of this research is to detect if there is a difference in the assessment of AD/HD, given by the parents and teachers in two urban areas, which have culturally and geographically different characteristics (Middle European and Mediterranean). The assessments of children's behavior were conducted in two randomly selected schools; one in Zadar (Mediterranean town on the Adriatic coast) and the other in Zagreb (Middle European city). The children were evaluated by the experts using DSM IV as a gold standard, and by the parents and teachers using Conners rating scales. Analysis of results showed that there were differences in assessment of AD/HD among experts and parents/teachers, and among parents from two towns. Different results given by parents in Zadar and Zagreb, we reasoned, were obtained because of different sensitivity to the problems of hyperactive/impulsive/attention deficiency children's behavior.