Sluggish Cognitive Tempo - History

History

See also: History of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Symptoms of the inattentive type were first described in 1775 by Melchior Adam Weikard and in 1798 by Alexander Crichton in their medical textbooks.

Originally, SCT was thought to be a subtype of ADHD Primarily Inattentive Type (ADHD-I), however, SCT is not recognized as a mental disorder in any of the medical manuals, such as the ICD-10 or the DSM-IV, neither is it part of the proposed revision of this manual, the DSM-5. SCT continues to be the subject of occasional studies in the psychological literature, particularly that involving ADHD, and focuses on how this group of individuals may differ from or be similar to those having ADHD.

SCT was originally discovered in the 1980s when the DSM-III first began subtyping ADHD as attention deficit disorder (ADD) with or without hyperactivity. Research comparing these subtypes produced a mixed pattern of results with some studies supporting the distinction while others did not. Later studies comparing these subtypes began to notice that those with ADHD-I seemed to have a higher frequency of symptoms of daydreaming, staring, being spacey or easily confused, mental fogginess, and hypoactivity or lethargy. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, studies began to appear that specifically chose participants for having these symptoms of SCT directly rather than those who met criteria for ADHD-I. Such research proved to be more fruitful in identifying a more reliable pattern of differences in cognitive abilities, comorbid disorders and impairments than had been the case for ADHD-I.