Pharmacological intervention, mainly with psychostimulants, alone or with psychotherapy or behavioural modification, was found to be effective in increasing sustained attention span, improving concentration, reducing hyperactive behaviour and improving areas of academic deficits in children and adolescents with the diagnosis of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Despite their proven efficacy, noncompliance of the children and adolescents to the prescribed medication presents serious problems to patients and health care providers alike.
Objective: To investigate the rate of adherence to prescribed medication in a clinically referred sample of children and adolescents diagnosed as having ADHD. In addition, the stability of reports of adherence over a 3 month period was explored.
Method: Fifty-one children and adolescents (males: n = 42; females: n = 9) between the age of 7 years and 16.6 years diagnosed with ADHD and their parents were administered a children behaviour checklist, a teacher report form scale and a compliance with treatment opinion and attitude scale.
Results: There were very high reports of adherence by children to prescribed medications for ADHD with rates of compliance greater than 70%. Correlation between the children and adolescents' reports and the parents' reports revealed high agreement both at the end of week 1 and at the end of the study (week 12). There were also findings of stability of adherence reports over a 3 month period.
Conclusion: The results of this study documented high rates of adherence to medication prescribed for symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in a sample of children and adolescents. Their reports of adherence were well correlated with parents' reports. Several factors were found to be related to the high level of adherence.
Copyright 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.