An exploratory clinical study of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in young adulthood / 中国神经精神疾病杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective The exploratory study aimed to characterize the clinical features and the patterns of comorbidity and psychosocial functioning of adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Methods The study initially recruited 88 children who diagnosed with ADHD at age 6～16 years. They were reevaluated and administered structured psychiatric interviews for DSM-IV when they were at least 18 years old. A total of 59 adults with ADHD and 29 controls with GAF>70 were included in the study. Results Fifty-one(86.4%)of the adult ADHD were diagnosed as predominantly inattentive subtype of ADHD. The most common adult ADHD symptoms included "often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities (98.3%); often avoiding doing work projects where effort at thinking a lot is required (96.6%); often has trouble paying close attention to details (94.9%); often has problems following through on instructions and finishing job tasks (96.6%); often has difficulty sustaining attention (88.1%); often is distracted easily by extraneous stimuli (72.9%)". The majority (66.1%) of the adult ADHD had one or more psychiatric axis-I/axis-II comorbidity. Among them, 39.0% had psychiatric axis-I comorbidity and 49.2% had personality axis-II comorbidity. The average GAF score was significant lower in adult ADHD than in controls ( t =12.96, P <0.001). The majority (74.6%) of the adult ADHD had mild or moderate impairment or distress of overall functioning. Conclusions The main feature of adult ADHD is attention deficit. Patients with adult ADHD usually have comorbid conditions such as other psychiatric disorders and personality disorders and their psychosocial functioning is relatively poor.