ADHD Kids Become Depressed Teens

A new study carried out by Andrea Chronis-Tuscano, PhD, of the University of Maryland, College Park, and colleagues suggests that young children suffering from ADHD have a higher risk for adolescent depression and/or suicide attempt five to thirteen years after diagnosis.

The researchers focused on 125 kids between 4 and 6 years old who had all the medically-diagnosed criteria for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and also considered a control group of 123 demographically matched kids without ADHD symptoms, in Chicago and Pittsburgh.

Their goal was to find out whether children suffering from ADHD have higher risks of developing depression and suicide attempts while growing up, so they followed the subjects until their 18 years of age.

The results of this survey concluded that children who were diagnosed with attention-deficit / hyperactivity disorder between ages 4 to 6, had a higher risk of being depressed between 9 and 18 years old.

Also 17 of the 248 children had specific suicidal plans at least once – 12% of children and teens with ADHD and 1.6% of kids in the control group.

The authors reported that “a total of 18.4 percent of children and adolescents with ADHD and 5.7 percent of comparison children and adolescents made at least one suicide attempt by assessment year 14.

“Our findings indicate that young children with ADHD are at high risk for both single and recurrent episodes of adolescent depression and for suicidal behavior, even controlling for a history of major depression in their mothers and other demographic and methodological predictors of these outcomes.”

They added that maternal depression along with emotional and behavioral problems in a child aged 4 to 6 years, were the factors that predicted depression and attempted suicide in ADHD children, with girls facing a higher risk than boys.

For more precise results, the researchers divided ADHD into three categories (inattentiveness, hyperactivity and/or a combination of the two) and found out that each type had different consequences.

Children that were both inattentive and hyperactive risked depression as well as attempted suicide, while those that were only inattentive, only risked depression.

Also, those that were hyperactive, had high chances of attempting suicide but did not risk being depressed.

Adults can suffer from ADHD too, and 16 to 37% of them also have major depressive disorders and/or dysthymia, which is a moderate type of depression.

“When major depressive disorder occurs concurrently with ADHD, major depressive disorder has an earlier age of onset, has a longer duration and results in greater impairment,” related the article.

“These findings suggest that it is possible to identify children with ADHD at very young ages who are at very high risk for later depression and suicidal behavior.”

“Considered in light of what is already known about the antisocial outcomes of childhood ADHD and their risk for unintentional injury, it would not be premature to test early prevention programs designed to reduce both serious behavioral and affective sequelae of ADHD in early childhood,” the authors concluded.

The report was published in the October issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.