The Other Attention Disorder:
Cognitive Disengagement Syndrome
(formerly Sluggish Cognitive Tempo) versus ADHD

Since 1798, the medical literature on attention disorders has distinguished between at least two kinds, one a disorder of distractibility, lack of sustained attention, and poor inhibition and the other a disorder of low power, arousal, or focus. This second disorder has been largely ignored for nearly two centuries until the mid1980s when studies of children having ADD without Hyperactivity suggested that an important subset had a relatively distinct pattern of symptoms not central to ADHD. These symptoms included daydreaming, mental fogginess and confusion, staring, slow processing of information, hypoactivity, slow movement, and lethargy, among others. The new pattern was called sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT). Controversy has continued over the past 25 years on the nature of CDS and whether it is a subtype of ADHD or a distinct disorder from it. In this presentation, Dr. Barkley reviews the history of CDS and what is known about it from past research. He also describes the results of his own recent investigations into CDS in children and the only study of CDS in adults that he recently published, all of which suggest that CDS is a distinct disorder from ADHD but one that may overlap with it in nearly half of all cases. Dr. Barkley discusses the differences between CDS in symptoms, executive functioning, comorbidity for other disorders, and psychosocial impairment and what little is known about differential treatment response. He also discusses several different possibilities for explaining the underlying nature of CDS.

All of these findings are summarized in the Report of the Workgroup on Sluggish Cognitive Tempo in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry to be found here.
https://www.jaacap.org/article/S0890...

Topics Covered in the CDS Lectures:
Part I: Provide a Brief Review of Medical History of CDS and Its Symptoms
Part II: Demographic and Cognitive Differences of CDS from ADHD and Overlap
Part III: Impairments in CDS and Other Distinctions from ADHD
Part IV: Etiologies in CDS and Other Distinctions from ADHD
Part V: The Underlying Nature of CDS vs. ADHD
Part VI: Results of Treatment Research and Its Implications for Management of CDS