Girls with childhood ADHD as adults: Cross-domain outcomes by diagnostic persistence.

Abstract

Objective To ascertain adult outcomes in ten domains reflecting symptomatology (internalizing, externalizing, self-injury, substance use), attainment (education, employment), and impairment (health, social, driving, overall) as a function of both childhood diagnosis of ADHD and persistence of ADHD symptoms across time. Method We prospectively followed 140 grade-school-aged girls with rigorously diagnosed childhood ADHD and 88 age- and ethnicity-matched comparison girls for 16 years. Outcome measures were obtained via self- and parent-report questionnaires, interviews, and objective tests. Results Childhood ADHD, whether it remitted or persisted, was a pernicious risk factor for a limited number of poor outcomes, including low educational attainment, unplanned pregnancy, body mass index, and clinician-rated impairment. Childhood ADHD that persisted over time, whether completely or partially, was associated with a number of additional detrimental outcomes in the externalizing, internalizing, self-injury, occupational, social, and overall impairment domains. Finally, in this all-female sample, ADHD was not associated with objective measures of employment, substance use, or driving outcomes. Conclusions We discuss the considerable impairments accruing from both childhood-limited and adult-persisting ADHD, with major implications for the health and well-being of females with this neurodevelopmental disorder.

Inattention in primary school is not good for your future school achievement—A pattern classification study

“…This has been shown in several studies of individuals with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity disorder (ADHD, see e.g. [ 3 , 4 ]), but is also widely documented in studies including community samples [ 5 – 11 ]. In most of these studies, inattention is defined as a sum score across a set of items.…”

Adolescent Mediators of Unplanned Pregnancy among Women with and without Childhood ADHD

“…Retention was excellent: 91.6% at W2, 94.7% at W3, and 92.6% at W4. We examined the representativeness of the sample retained at W4, as described in Owens et al (2017), concluding that the few non-retained participants showed some demographic disadvantage, lower IQs, and greater problematic behavior during childhood according to teachers but not parents.…”

“…As a consequence, we were concerned by findings from our longitudinal, prospective study of the progression of childhood ADHD in girls (Owens, Zalecki, Gillette, & Hinshaw 2017) indicating that the rate of unplanned pregnancy among girls with childhood ADHD (42.6%) was far higher than among girls without childhood ADHD (10.6%). Intriguingly, this association did not depend on whether clinically significant ADHD symptoms had persisted into adulthood, nor was it a function of socioeconomic status or other baseline covariates including child IQ and psychiatric comorbidities.…”

Parent Rated Symptoms of Inattention in Childhood Predict High School Academic Achievement Across Two Culturally and Diagnostically Diverse Samples

“…Other studies have emphasized the importance of inattention, one of the core symptom domains of ADHD. This association is illustrated by longitudinal follow-up studies of girls participating in the Berkeley Girls with ADHD Longitudinal Study (BGALS; see Lee and Hinshaw, 2006 ; Owens et al, 2017 ) and substantiated by Garner et al (2013) . In the latter investigation, based on teacher and parent ratings of inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity symptoms in a large sample of 5663 boys and girls with ADHD (age range: 3–17), teacher ratings of inattention emerged as the strongest predictor of later academic achievement.…”