ADHD Linked to Socioeconomic Factors

The June issue of the esteemed journal Acta Paediatrica will feature a paper describing the latest, major investigation of children suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The condition is extremely widespread in the United States, where millions of children are told to take various drugs for their ailments. In the investigation, scientists explain the link they discovered between the condition and a number of socioeconomic factors affecting children, such as the amount of welfare benefits their family get each month, the number of parents they have, or the amount of education their mothers got.

The new study is one of the largest ever conducted on ADHD, as it covers the cases of more than 1.16 million children. The data were taken from the Swedish Prescribed Drug Register, and the research was led by a collaboration of the Karolinska Institutet and the Stockholm University, called the Center for Health Equity Studies (CHES). “We identified 7,960 Swedish-born children, aged between six and 19, using a prescription for ADHD medication as our indicator of severe ADHD.”

“We then tracked their records through other registers, using the unique ten digit reference number all Swedish residents are given at birth, to determine a number of other factors,” says the lead author of the new paper, Anders Hjern, who is a professor at the Center.

Children suffering from ADHD can most often be recognized through symptoms such as hyperactivity, impulsivity and inattention. The condition is classified as a common, treatable disorder, and is believed to affect regions of the brain that play an important part in controlling impulses, planning ahead, solving complex issues, or understanding and relating to others' actions. “Genes are also known to play an important role in the development of ADHD and studies of identical twins show that they are very likely to exhibit the same ADHD traits,” Hjern says. He carried out the investigation while still based at the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare, AlphaGalileo reports.

“Our study showed that almost half of the cases could be explained by the socioeconomic factors included in our analysis, clearly demonstrating that these are potent predictors of ADHD-medication in Swedish schoolchildren. There are several ways that family factors may influence ADHD. For example, low parental education is associated with general social disadvantage, a higher number of stress factors and a greater risk of childhood adversity,” the professor adds.

“Lack of time and money are more common in single parent families, as are lack of social support and family conflict, including separation, divorce and parental absence. We believe that further research into ADHD should focus on the interaction between genes and environmental factors in order to determine the reasons why some children develop ADHD and how it could be prevented,” he concludes.