While in India I am interested in exploring how Indian mothers perceive disruptive behaviors in children ages 5-12. In the United States Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is very well researched, in India there seems to be a gap in the literature when it comes to ADHD especially when viewing how Indian mothers perceive these behaviors, I plan to help fill this void. 

 

Gerdes, Hoza, and Pelham (2003) viewed how parents of boys up to 12 years diagnosed with ADHD perceived relationships with their children in the United States. Their findings supported that parents of ADHD boys perceived the relationship with their children more negatively compared to parents of boys without ADHD. These findings were specifically interesting because the boys with ADHD did not differ from the boys without ADHD in how they perceive their relationships with their parents.

 

As previously stated, there is a large gap in the literature when it comes to perceptions of ADHD behaviors making this somewhat of a pilot study. I am assuming that the research findings by Gerdes et al. (2003) will correlate well with my research findings due to the similarities of the studies. I am interested in finding how relevant is the stigma with mental health especially when it is a child of their own that has been diagnosed.

 

I will be conducting both a quantitative and a qualitative portion of my study. For the quantitative portion I will be surveying 100 mothers that have children between the ages of 5 to 12. This survey will seek to identify their perceptions of ADHD behaviors by asking questions such as "How would you rate your knowledge about how to handle children that is misbehaving?" and "How would you rate your knowledge about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)?". For the qualitative portion I will be asking 20 to 25 mothers that also have children between the ages of 5 to 12 to complete the same survey as the quantitative group in addition to participating in a 1 hour long focus group with other mothers. The focus group facilitator will go over topics such as expectations on child behaviors, perceptions of the Center fir Disease Control (CDC) ADHD checklist, and how they would react if their children were to behave this way. 

​

This topic is of interest to me because I am interested in looking at how culture affects our views of mental illness and if so, why? In the future I plan to go to graduate school and continue researching this topic with different cultures. I would like to see if socio-economic status, race, and other factors affect the way people view mental illness. I would like to help in de-stigmatizing mental health and educating different cultures in how to handle different disorders. This is a very low risk study, my only concern with exploring this research in India is ​that parents would not want to answer questions about they're child because they feel guarded with their children and how they feel about them.