Steven Bennett

Professor Kerr

En101-23

10/4/11

ADHD Compared To Dyslexia

            Three to seven percent of school children in the United States are affected by a disease that impairs their ability to learn (“who is affected by attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD)”). This disease is known as Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. It is more commonly referred to as (ADHD). Children who suffer from ADHD have trouble focusing in school because they cannot sit still which affects their ability to learn in class. ADHD can be a hard disease to diagnose. Experts estimate that nearly 320 to 500 million dollars per year  are spent on ADHD medication for children that were not correctly diagnosed (“Nearly 1 million ADHD misdiagnoses, study says”). But for those who do suffer from the disease it can have a great effect on schooling and everyday life. A different disease that affects a student’s ability to learn is dyslexia. Dyslexia can make the sufferer have difficulty processing language, reading and writing. Dyslexia is well known as the disease that makes people read and write backwards. These two diseases are both labeled as learning disabilities but they are different because of who is affected, what is affected, and the accommodations that are made for people with these diseases.

Dyslexia is more prevalent in the United States then ADHD. Surveys show that five to ten percent of the United States population is affected by dyslexia (“reading from scratch”).  Unlike ADHD scientist are not sure if it more prevalent in boys than girls. Someone suffering from dyslexia is never going to grow out of the disease. This is not always the case for someone with ADHD some estimations show that nearly half of children with ADHD don’t suffer from symptoms in adulthood (“who is affected by attention deficit hyperactive disorder(ADHD)”). ADHD may be an outcome of brain injuries that were suffered because of birth trauma.  ADHD is connected to hypoxic damage which is caused by the lack of oxygen reaching parts of the brain and the reduction of blood flow during birth (“ADHD”).  Dyslexia is not a disease that is caused by birth complications. Suffers from dyslexia naturally suffer from the disease.

            Both dyslexia and ADHD interfere with the brains ability to work properly. A brain suffering from dyslexia has an underutilized left hemisphere which is the side of the brain used for reading (“reading from scratch”). In ADHD the main problem is slow brain wave activity which affects the lack of control. The lack of one’s self-control is a major ability that is affected by this disease (“neurology of ADHD”).Dyslexia also affects a person’s corpus callosum which is a group of nerve cells that transfers information from one side of the brain to the other. This means that the brain cannot work together to its maximum ability which affects the person’s ability to learn.

            ADHD has more positive outlook then dyslexia. There are ways for someone that is dyslexic to deal with the disease but there is no proven medication that helps with symptoms like there is for ADHD. There are more accommodations made for someone with dyslexia due to this fact. Some of these accommodations are, extra time on a test, step by step instructions, and allowing use of instructional aids (“accommodating students with dyslexia”). Accommodations are made for ADHD sufferers for example; lightened work load, provided brief instructions, provided note taking partner.  The accommodations made for students with these disabilities can help even the playing field for them.

            These two learning disabilities are different in who they affect one is more prevalent in boys than girls, and the other does not discriminate in sex. Both of these diseases affect the brains ability to learn. Dyslexia affects that ability by scrambling letters around in a person’s head due to the left side and the right side of the brain not working together. ADHD gives a student trouble by making them have so much energy that it makes them hard to concentrate and fully complete a task. By law school boards have to make accommodations for people suffering from both of these disorders. ADHD can be greatly reduced outside of the classroom with the use of medication. Dyslexia is also controlled outside of the classroom but there is no easy fix, there is a lot of work put into reducing the symptoms of dyslexia. Learning disabilities are similar in the fact that they affect a person’s ability to learn but they are different in the fact that they give people different difficulties and problems to overcome.

           

           

Bibliography

“who is affected by attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD)” -http://health.msn.com/health-topics/who-is-affected-by-attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder-adhd

“Nearly 1 million ADHD misdiagnoses, study says”- http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/18/nearly-1-million-adhd-misdiagnoses-study-says/

“reading from scratch”- http://www.dyslexia.org/

(ADHD)-http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/diseases/facts/adhd.htm

“accommodating students with dyslexia”- http://www.ncld.org/at-school/general-topics/accommodations/accommodating-students-with-dyslexia