A new study reveals that childhood attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADHD, often endures into adulthood and presents an increased risk for developing a multitude of psychiatric disorders in the future.
The study was published in the journal Pediatrics and found that 29 percent of children who received an ADHD diagnosis still had the disorder at the age of 27, according to the findings.Researchers looked at data from 5,718 children born between 1976 and 1982.
"The risk for persistent ADHD is considerable, and the risk for at least one mental health condition, including ADHD, is extraordinarily high," said William Barbaresi, the study's lead investigator and developmental medicine specialist at Boston Children's Hospital.
"Only 37.5 percent of the children we contacted as adults were free of these really worrisome outcomes."
The research also showed that about 57 percent of children with an ADHD diagnosis had at least one other psychiatric disorder in adulthood.
And only 35 percent of subjects in the comparison group of the study who did not have childhood ADHD went on to have a psychiatric disorder in adulthood.
An increased risk of suicide was also found during the study with a risk almost five times higher in the ADHD group as compared to the comparison group.
"It is chilling to see evidence, at least in this study, of the increased risk for death by suicide among children diagnosed with ADHD, with most of these tragic cases also having a history of substance abuse and at least one co-existing psychiatric diagnosis," said J. Russell Ramsay, who was not involved in the study and is the co-director of the University of Pennsylvania's ADHD Treatment and Research Program in Philadelphia.
Symptoms of ADHD in adults often present as trouble focusing, restlessness, impulsivity, difficulty completing tasks and unstable relationships-according to the Mayo Clinic.
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