Objective Handwriting difficulties are common to children with attention deficient hyperactive disorder (ADHD). The aim of our study was to find distinctive characteristics of the handwriting of children with ADHD by using graphology to analyze physical characteristics and patterns of their handwriting, and to evaluate whether graphological analysis is an effective ADHD diagnostic tool for clinicians.
Method A graphologist analyzed handwriting text from 49 patients, 22/49 previously diagnosed with ADHD, aged 13-18 years, in a randomized, single-blinded study. All study participants wrote a story in Hebrew in 10-12 lines, on a blank paper with a blue pen, during a period of twenty minutes. A licensed graphologist was given the papers, without details, for characterize evaluation. The graphologist suggested a profile of a person with ADHD, and every patient received one point for each ADHD handwriting characteristic, up to 15 points. Patients with 9-15 points were considered to have ADHD, based on their graphology evaluation.
Results The study group included 21 (43%) males and 28 (57%) females, with 15 (71.4%) males and 7 (25%) females diagnosed with ADHD. Overall, the mean score in the ADHD group (9.6, SD=3.49) was significantly higher ( p =0.002) than in the control group (5.79, SD=4.01).
Conclusion Handwriting in ADHD children and adolescence has specific characteristics, thus graphological analysis could be a useful tool for clinicians in diagnosis of ADHD.