By: M. Carmen Moreno Blasco, neuropsychologist for childhood and adolescence at UDAC-CTI Elche, and Dr. Ángela Sempere, neuropediatrist and coordinator of the UDAC-CTI Elche
On the occasion of World Children’s Day, the CIT, Center de Teràpia Interfamiliar, wants to emphasize the importance of ensuring that every child has all the necessary resources to achieve better personal and social development. To this end, we try from our facility to always address developmental, behavioral or emotional difficulties that arise in children together with the family and the school in a transdisciplinary way (psychologists, speech therapists, occupational therapists, psychiatrists and neuropediatricians). essential ally in the therapy of children with difficulty.
In our daily work we diagnose and treat children with developmental difficulties or delays, language difficulties, autistic symptoms, attention and hyperactivity difficulties, high capacities and / or behavioral or emotional problems.
All of these children receive a neuropediatric and / or psychiatric examination, in which the organicity is discarded. You will be assessed by neuropsychology, speech therapy and / or occupational therapy, make a diagnosis and refer the most suitable specialist within our department.
Strengthen the family
Intervention with the family is fundamental to our team. We choose a family-oriented model that does more and more more interventions in the children’s home and strengthening the family as a fundamental part of the interventions. At the same time, there is continuous coordination and consultation with the schools in order to work together on the needs of the child and to generalize the achieved goals to different contexts.
Diagnosing ADHD
One of the most common diagnoses made in the consultation today is attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which affects up to 5-8% of children. It is a neurobiological disorder that involves dopaminergic and noradrenergic circuits in the brain, which are essential to the maintenance of our executive functions.
Executive functions
Some of the most important and important executive functions are:
- argumentation: to be able to use the various pieces of information and see the possible connections between them and work out possible explanations.
- planning: It enables us to develop action plans and generate a series of steps that lead us to a specific goal.
- Set goals: Ability combined with motivation that enables us to choose what to do, how to invest our energies and where to direct our behavior.
- Make a decision: allows us to determine which option to choose from among the many that can be presented to us.
- Start and end tasks: Both starting a task and ending an action is an important cognitive activity.
- organization: Ability to combine and structure information in an efficient and useful way.
- inhibition: This is one of the most important functions. Ability that enables us to regulate our actions by stopping the behavior. It enables us to resist certain impulses, stop an action and prevent harmless information from affecting our behavior.
- monitoring: the ability to keep track of the task and regulate what and how we do what we do.
- Reminder of verbal and non-verbal work: Ability to store information so that the subject can later work with it both verbally and non-verbally.
- Expectation: Ability to anticipate the results of an action and its consequences.
- flexibility: enables us to change our way of acting or thinking in the face of possible environmental changes or to change ongoing measures.
Symptoms of ADHD
These features include dopaminergic and noradrenergic circuitswhich, when they fail, lead to a cognitive and behavioral problem, with ADHD being more or less defined by the presence of the following symptoms:
- Attention deficit: They avoid doing tasks that require continuous mental exertion, they have difficulty concentrating, they are easily distracted, they make mistakes due to this absent-mindedness, they have difficulty organizing themselves, they leave half-tasks and them lose or forget necessary items.
Hyperactivity: They don’t stop quietly, they don’t know how to play soft games, they sit down and they talk non-stop.
impulsiveness: They react hastily, interrupt and do not know how to wait their turn.
Treatment of ADHD
Treating a child with ADHD will depend on the grade and characteristics of each child and will always recommend an appropriate one psychoeducational intervention in ADHD, along with the family and school approach. Appropriate pharmacological treatment is indicated for children with greater cognitive, behavioral, or emotional impairment.
Psychoeducational intervention in ADHD
It is psychoeducational intervention in ADHD where platforms like NeuronUP help us to make the intervention with these children more motivating for them. Better control of symptoms and greater treatment success.
The cognitive stimulation by the computer with playful activities is a requirement for them every day. We observe that both children who are predominantly inattentive and children who are hyperactivity and impulsive can work longer hours without showing any signs of loss of attention or interest in tasks. At the motor level, too, they seem to be able to better control their restlessness when performing tasks with the computer.
NeuronUP has made our cognitive stimulation much easier through its online platform. For each of our children we create individual profiles with name and password in which we choose the activities we want to carry out, depending on the areas in which we want to work in each session: leadership functions, attention, memory, processing speed, planning, etc. , among other. In this way, the results of each work area are registered in the individual profile, so that the development of the child can be followed in each of the areas described.
W.Without a doubt, it was a great success for us to work with NeuronUP, to stimulate cognitive functions as well as to develop social skills and to carry out the activities of daily living. And without forgetting the most important thing, which is to play when you get the greatest commitment and motivation from the youngest.
By: M. Carmen Moreno Blasco, neuropsychologist for childhood and adolescence at UDAC-CTI Elche, and Dr. Ángela Sempere, neuropediatrist and coordinator of the UDAC-CTI Elche
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Summary
item name
Psychoeducational intervention in people with ADHD
description
From UDAC-CTI Elche they explain to us how they perform psycho-educational treatments and interventions in people with ADHD through NeuronUP.
author
M. Carmen Moreno Blasco and Ángela Sempere
Editor’s name
NeuronUP
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