As if having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder isn’t bad enough: New research this week suggests that people with ADHD are living shorter lives than expected.
Scientists at University College London in the UK conducted the study, which compared the health records of similar people with and without ADHD. They found that people who had ADHD tended to be sicker and die sooner than their counterparts. The findings indicate that those with the condition are often not getting the support they need, the researchers say.
ADHD is a complex disorder characterized by symptoms like restlessness, impulsiveness, and having trouble staying focused, especially on everyday tasks. The condition is caused by a mix of genetic and environmental factors, such as exposure to lead or other toxins early on in life. ADHD tends to first appear in childhood, but many people are only diagnosed as adults or never diagnosed at all. While the condition typically doesn’t go away with age, a person’s symptoms can change as they get older.
People with ADHD are known to be higher risk of other health issues, such as not getting enough good sleep and substance use problems; they’re also more likely to experience stressful life events like prolonged unemployment. Some studies have also suggested that ADHD sufferers are more likely to die early than the general public. However, the scientists behind the new research argue that not enough prior work has been done to quantify the impact of ADHD on people’s life expectancy.
Hence the new study. The researchers analyzed primary care data from around 30,000 adult UK residents diagnosed with ADHD. These people were compared to a larger group of residents without ADHD but who were similar in age, sex, and the doctors they visited.
The researchers found that people with ADHD were more likely to have a variety of other common physical and mental health conditions, including diabetes, high blood pressure, anxiety, and depression. They also had higher mortality rates across different age groups, which was seen in both men and women. Overall, the researchers estimated that diagnosed ADHD was tied to a reduction in life expectancy of 6.78 years for men and 8.64 years for women.
“The evidence that people with diagnosed ADHD are living shorter lives than they should is extremely concerning, and highlights unmet support needs that require urgent attention,” the scientists wrote in their paper, published Thursday in The British Journal of Psychiatry.
The researchers do note that they were only able to study people with diagnosed ADHD, which is likely an undercount. Only about 0.32% of people in their sample were diagnosed with ADHD, whereas other research suggests that roughly 3% of the population has the condition. People with diagnosed ADHD might be more likely to have other health problems than undiagnosed cases, the researchers say. This gap could mean that they’re overestimating the toll that ADHD in general is having on people’s life expectancy. The researchers also lacked data on people’s specific causes of death, so this study can’t tell us exactly how ADHD is raising people’s risk of early death.
All that said, it’s clear that people with ADHD are facing unique health and societal challenges, and that not enough is being done to diagnose and help people with ADHD as early as possible, the authors say.
“It is crucial that we find out the reasons behind premature deaths so we can develop strategies to prevent these in the future,” said lead researcher Liz O’Nions in a statement from UCL.
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