Increased diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder despite stable hyperactive/inattentive behaviours: evidence from two birth cohorts of Australian children.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Globally, ADHD diagnoses have increased substantially and there is concern that this trend does not necessarily reflect improved detection of cases but that overdiagnosis may be occurring. We directly compared ADHD diagnoses with ADHD-related behaviours and looked for changes across time among Australian children in a large, population-based prospective cohort study.

Methods

We conducted a secondary analysis of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, including 4,699 children born 1999/2000 (cohort 1) and 4,425 children born 2003/2004 (cohort 2), followed from 4 to 13 years of age. We compared pre-diagnosis parent-reported hyperactive/inattentive behaviour scores between newly diagnosed (incident cases) and undiagnosed children and fitted Cox's proportional

SUBMITTER: Kazda L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10952655 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature