Children with autism who also have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are more likely to develop anxiety and depression than autistic kids without ADHD, a US study suggests.
Researchers examined data on 3,319 children ranging in age from 6 to 17 years old who had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Overall, 1,503 of these kids, or 45 percent, had also been diagnosed with ADHD.
Compared to children with autism alone, kids who also had ADHD were more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression and anxiety, researchers reported in Pediatrics.
Lead study author Dr. Eliza Gordon-Lipkin, a researcher at Kennedy Krieger Institute and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, said: “Anxiety disorder and mood disorder, while very common in autism spectrum disorder, are even more common when children also have ADHD.”
“Recognizing and treating anxiety and mood disorders can lead to improved quality of life for patients and their families,” she said by email.
According to Reuters, Approximately 1 in 68 US kids have ASD and about 1 in 10 have ADHD.
The research team pointed out that while it has long been recognized that ADHD is much more common among kids with autism than among other children, research to date hasn’t offered a clear picture of how living with both conditions at once impacts the risk of other behavioral or mental health problems.
In the current study, children with both conditions were 2.2 times more likely than those with only ASD to have anxiety and 2.7 times more likely to have depression. The risk of developing anxiety and depression also increased with age.
The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how having ADHD in addition to autism might make kids develop anxiety or depression.
Geraldine Dawson, director of the Center for Autism and Brain Development at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, and who didn’t partake in the study, advised parents of kids with autism to lookout for symptoms of anxiety and mood disorders.
She also said by email: “Both medications and behavioral interventions, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, can be very helpful for children with autism who have anxiety or mood disorder.”
