ADHD often lasts well into adulthood

[Alan C.]

ADHD often lasts well into adulthood, increases mental illness risk

Sometimes it’s easy for people to simply dismiss attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as just an irritating childhood learning disorder, which eventually disappears when people reach adulthood.

However, ADHD can actually have a more lasting impact than previously thought. In the first ever population-based to study to follow children with ADHD into adulthood, researchers discovered that nearly a third of children diagnosed with the disorder continued to have ADHD well into their adult years.

Along with this revelatory finding came a whole host of other surprising discoveries regarding the future of those with ADHD. Not only did their symptoms often persist, but children with ADHD were often diagnosed with another psychiatric disorder as adults. More disturbingly, those with ADHD were more likely to be incarcerated and a few small cases revealed that they were slightly more likely to commit suicide than control subjects.

. . .

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), up to 9.5 percent of children between the ages of 4 and 17 have been reported as having ADHD.  Classified as a psychiatric disorder by the American Psychiatric Association, ADHD is characterized by either trouble with inattentiveness, hyperactive behavior, or impulsiveness – or sometimes a combination of all three.

The 20-year-long Mayo Clinic study followed a birth cohort of 5,718 children born in Rochester, Minn., between 1976 and 1982. Of the study’s participants, 367 had been diagnosed with ADHD, three-quarters of whom had received treatment for the disorder as children. After analyzing the participants’ medical records, as well as performing follow-up interviews and diagnostic tests, Barbaresi and his team gathered some very valuable – and unexpected – facts about ADHD.

Of the children with ADHD, 29.3 percent still undoubtedly had the disorder as adults, and of that percentage, 81 percent had at least one other psychiatric disorder. The most common disorders included substance abuse, antisocial personality disorder, hypomanic episodes, generalized anxiety and major depression. Having another psychiatric illness was fairly common in general as 57 percent of all children with ADHD had another psychiatric disorder as adults, in contrast with 35 percent of control subjects.

Of the 367 children with ADHD, seven had died at the time of the study’s recruitment – three from suicide. Compared to the 4,956 children without ADHD, 37 of them had died – five from suicide. While the numbers were small, these statistics suggested a rate of suicide among ADHD children five times higher than those without the disorder. And finally, 10 children with ADHD (2.7 percent) were in jail when recruitment for the study began.

I haven't read the study, but the article seems to imply that ADHD is just some random condition that affects people for no reason. I find the implication in the title of the article - that ADHD increases mental illness risk - to be a highly questionable cause/effect relation. I think that ADHD is an effect rather than a cause.

[Drew.]

I quite agree with you, even though I have no studies to support my view.

 

My father was diagnosed with ADHD in his 20's, I believe. Since I could remember, he had been taking ritalin to combat his symptoms. When my father didn't take his ritalin, he seemed depressed, after all ritalin is a psychostimulant. It was said that he had it all of his life. But what I know for a fact he had all of his life was a really shitty childhood. His father was a politician who was involved with the mafia and crazy religious wives.

 

The symptoms definitely last a lifetime if one never acts to intervene through self-knowledge and psychotherapy.