KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: Teachers need to learn how to spot Attention Deficit Disorders (ADD) among pupils and get quick help. Otherwise, the children will be doomed to learning difficulties throughout their school years.

About one in five children are afflicted with ADD and, if left unattended, lose motivation, become noisy, naughty and lazy.

These were the findings of a nine-month pilot study on Year One and Two pupils in five Klang Valley primary schools jointly carried out by University Malaya Medical Centre's (UMMC) Child Psychiatry Unit head Dr Aili Hanim Hashim and senior lecturer Dr Subash Kumar Pillai.

Dr Subash said that a few teachers and counsellors, trained to identify ADD pupils in Year One and Two, spotted 50 of them and sent them to the Child Psychiatry Unit.

"They were treated by psychiatrists to cope with learning difficulties and being unable to follow the teacher," he said.

Some pupils were asked to bring along their parents as they were depressed or suffered emotional problems because the parents constantly quarrelled or were divorced, he said.

"After treatment, the pupils returned to classes and about half of them showed improvement," he said at a UMMC Seminar on Mental Health Problems Among Children in Schools aimed at raising awareness about the need to promote and protect children's mental health.

"Good mental health is essential for a child's learning, social development and self-esteem.

"It is shown that mental health developed in early childhood becomes the basis of one's mental health throughout adult life," Dr Subash said.