Problems in the Treatment of Hyperkinetic Children

Abstract

Current study of the hyperkinetic syndrome in children has it own prehistory, which has been systematically reviewed by Laufer & Denhoff (1957). More recently, O'Malley (1976) has described the clinical characteristics and pathogenesis of the syndrome and underscored their importance for the patient's prognosis. Practitioners in Bulgaria have followed the general development of knowledge of this syndrome in the world literature. We consider the hyperkinetic syndrome rather rare; we restrict the diagnosis to children with brain damage, as indicated by electroencephalograms and the patients' perinatal history. The prognosis for normal developmental functioning of such children must be termed guarded. In our therapeutic approach to them, we try to take socioeconomic and cultural aspects of the patients' background into consideration. Our treatment is multimodal and multidisciplinary , and includes drugs, short-term hospitalization, and special education. To illustrate the kind of child we regard as hyperkinetic and our approach to treatment , we present the following descriptions of three such children, who were treated in the Children's Department of the Psychiatric Hospital of the Medical Academy in Sofia, Bulgaria.