WHAAM

Health Application for ADHD Monitoring

We believe that effective behaviour monitoring is helpful in the diagnosis, assessment and the treatment of ADHD. The WHAAM project is about the WHAAM mobile application can be used to support parents, professionals and children with ADHD through the accurate recording of specific behaviours.

Build your network

The WHAAM app will initially take you through the process of setting up a specific network for your child or adolescent.

The parents play an important part in the organisation of every network.

In our experience it is important to have a health professional involved who has experience of both ADHD treatments and behavioural and emotional challenges.

The network will often include teachers or other adults that support the child or adolescent.

The network will help to monitor and gather evidence about identified behaviours in different contexts.

Identify the relevant behaviour

The relevant behaviour of the child will need to be evaluated while taking note of their social and life context. (i.e. at home, at school, with peers etc.)

Specific behaviour will be identified and defined, wherever possible with the help of a health professional.

The behaviour needs to be clearly identified in an understandable way.

It is important to make sure that the behaviour is both easily observable and measurable.

The setting that the behaviour occurs needs to be identified. This is known as the Setting Event.

Observe Behaviour

When we are observing behaviours we need to identify:

How often the behaviours happen (Frequency)

How long the behaviours occur (Duration)

Where the behaviours are observed (Setting)

The health professionals can be very helpful in identifying the specific behaviours to be observed. We have devised a specific training to help people understand how to improve the accuracy of their observations.

The WHAAM app can be used with tablets, smart phones and laptops.

The WHAAMapp permits to carry out the observation also using a smartphone.

Identify and understand the meaning of a behaviour

All behaviours have meaning. Even behaviours that appear to be spontaneous or impulsive will have a motivational factor.

This motivational factor is called the Function.

A useful way of identifying the function of a particular behaviour is to use the ABC approach of functional analysis.

A = What happened first – the antecedent

B = The Behaviour

C = The Consequence, which follows the behaviour we are observing.

The WHAAM app supports this approach.

Plann an intervention

The planning can be helped with the guidance of a health professional.

Parents and teachers can also contribute to developing the plan.

The WHAAM app helps in the key activities of observing, recording and the monitoring of strategies during the planned interventions.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.

This application reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission

cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Partnership

CNR - ITD

Palermo Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Istituto per le Tecnologie Didattiche uos di Palermo - Italy

UAEI - ESEPP

Unit of Support of the Inclusive School - School of Education of the Polytechnic of Porto Institute - Portugal

TCD

Trinity College Dublin - Ireland

AUTH

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Medical Physics Laboratory - Greek

ADDISS

National Attention Deficit Disorder Information and Support Service - UK