Introduction: Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), is one of the most common disorders in child psychiatry. Children with ADHD have difficulties in different areas, including motor skills and, especially motor coordination. Balance is one of the important components in motor coordination for exercise and even daily living activities.
Targeted exercise with focus on improving motor performance is an important part of the non-pharmacological treatments for ADHD patients in order to upgrade athletic skills, confidence, social relationships and improve the prognosis.
Objective: To investigate the effect of core stabilization training on balance in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders (ADHD).
Materials and Methods: This study is a semi-experimental (pretest, posttest without control group). The study population included all male students 8-11 years old with attention deficit/hyperactivity in Bandar Anzali in the 93-94 school year. At first, parents completed the Conners parent rating scale for ADHD and then, diagnostic criteria by clinical interview based on DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental Disorder) criteria were assessed by child psychiatrists. Finally, 10 children with ADHD were enrolled in the study. Static balance was assessed by stork modified test and dynamic balance by the star excursion balance test. Data were analyzed using SPSS-16.0 software. The normality of data was evaluated by Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, and then we used dependent t-test and independent t-test, and significance level was set at( P≤0.05).
Results: Statistical comparison of static and dynamic balance in the dominant and non-dominant foot before and after the implementation of core stabilization training in boys with ADHD showed that the implementation of this program improves the performance of static and dynamic balance (P≤ 0.05)but no significant difference was observed between the improvement of the dominant and non-dominant foot (P≥ 0.05).
Conclusion: Core stabilization training is effective on improving the static and dynamic balance in children with ADHD. It seems that these exercises can be targeted as interventions to improve balance performance used to enhance motor skills in children with ADHD.
Conflict of interest: none declared