The first large, population-based study to follow children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) into adulthood shows that ADHD often doesn't "go away," and that children with ADHD are more likely to have other psychiatric disorders as adults. Although numbers were small, they also appear more likely to commit suicide and are often incarcerated as adults.
"Only 37.5 percent of the children we contacted as adults were free of these really worrisome outcomes," says William Barbaresi, MD, of Boston Children's Hospital, lead investigator on the study, published in the April 2013 issue of Pediatrics and online March 4. "That's a sobering statistic that speaks to the need to greatly improve the long-term treatment of children with ADHD and provide a mechanism for treating them as adults."
"This was a unique population based study of a large group of individuals with ADHD followed from childhood to adulthood," added Slavica Katusic, MD, lead Mayo Clinic investigator of the study.
ADHD is the most common neuro-developmental disorder of childhood, affecting about 7 percent of all children and three times as many boys as girls. Most prior follow-up studies of ADHD have been small and focused on the severe end of the spectrum—like boys referred to pediatric psychiatric treatment facilities—rather than a cross-section of the ADHD population.
The long-running study, begun when Barbaresi was at the Mayo Clinic and continued in collaboration with Mayo researchers, led by Katusic, followed all children in Rochester, Minn. who were born from 1976 through 1982, were still in Rochester at age 5 and whose families allowed access to their medical records. That amounted to 5,718 children, including 367 who were diagnosed with ADHD; of this group; 232 participated in the follow-up study. About three-quarters had received ADHD treatment as children.
At follow-up, the researchers found: