Ethnic diversity of children and young people with ADHD

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Hello, so I'm Dr Tapomay Banerjee. I am a consultant paediatrician currently working in Bedford community paediatric team and my interest is ADHD, autism and sleep problems in children. So the research which I'm going to present here today is about the ethnic distribution of children who are diagnosed and under our care for their attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADHD. I did a similar project last year with autism, so this year it's turn for these children with ADHD.

The reason of doing this is because I see various responses from various ethnic groups about the concept of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, how we diagnose, how we find their early signs to recognise, and also the acceptance of diagnosis and their cultural backgrounds behind accepting a diagnosis and accepting management more importantly. So because we see various responses from various ethnic groups, and I represent a service where we serve wide range of ethnic variants, and it's a very wide geographical region as well, starting from very poor range to very rich population as well.

Looking at the study we have seen that although the numbers of ethnic minority children are quite significant, almost 25% in some parts of where I work, but their actual representation is quite low, maybe between 2 to 5%. So we need more targeted awareness campaign and more targeted support and working with the leaders of that particular ethnic or religious group to improve outcome of autism and ADHD.