The objective of the present study was to find the prevalence of attention deficit hyperactivity (ADH) symptoms in a highly consanguineous community.

A cross sectional study was conducted during October 2006 - January 2007.

A total of 2500 primary school students, aged 6-12 years were randomly selected from the government primary schools and 1869 students (74.8%) gave consent to participate in this study.

Of the students surveyed, 50.7% were boys and 49.3% girls. The data revealed that 158 boys [16.7%; 95%CI (14.4-19.2] and 50 girls [5.4%;95%CI (4.1-7.1)] scored above the cut-off (≥15) for ADH symptoms, thus giving an overall prevalence of [11.1%; 95%CI (9.7-12.6)]. The Children who had higher score for ADH symptoms were in the age group 6-9 years. Children who had higher score for ADH symptoms had school performance poorer than those with lower scores (P=0.002). 200 children (96.2%) with ADH were disobedient, 60.6% noisy and hyperactive, 36.5% very cranky, 37.5% troublesome and 37.9% nervous. The logistic regression identified in our study that socio-economic condition, number of children, school performance and poor relationship between parents were the main contributors for ADH. This shows that the consanguinity has no impact on ADH children.

The study revealed that ADH symptoms are found to be a common problem among the school children in Qatar. A significant difference was found between children with and without ADHD for their behaviour.