CYP Now - Health News: Hyperactivity disorders - Hyperkinesis link to family breakdown

Severely hyperactive children are three times as likely to be removed from their families as children with other mental health or behavioural problems, researchers have warned.

Around one per cent of children in the UK are thought to have the most extreme form of hyperactivity, which is known as hyperkinesis.

Researchers from the University of Manchester compared hyperkinetic children at a psychiatric clinic with children with emotional and behaviour disorders and found a disproportionately high number had been referred to foster parents, children's homes, adoptive families, and, in a few cases, hospitals.

Report author Dr David Foreman, a consultant at the child and adolescent mental health service in Bracknell, said that the research, which looked at more than 200 children, showed families of hyperkinetic children found it particularly difficult to cope.

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