Bibliometric analysis of publications on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in France since 1974.

BACKGROUND: The predominance of the psychodynamic approach is often put forward to explain the delay in diagnosis and treatment of attention-deficit disorder with hyperactivity (ADHD) reported in France. OBJECTIVE: A bibliometric study of abstracts, articles, or letters authored by French researchers may provide objective insight into this issue. METHODS: Online electronic databases were searched without any date limits for documents related to ADHD, and allocated to the AllFR group when all authors had an affiliation in France or to the notAllFR group when at least one author had an affiliation in France. Publications expressing any psychodynamic point of view on the causes and/or treatment of ADHD were identified. RESULTS: A total of 747 documents were analyzed: 417 were exclusively indexed in SCOPUS, and 418 were allocated to the AllFR group. Compared with documents in the notAllFR group, documents in the AllFR group were written by a smaller number of authors (median 3 vs. 6, p<0.002), more frequently evoked psychodynamic concepts (10.45% vs. 1.67%, p<0.001), and less frequently acknowledged the persistence of ADHD in adulthood (29.10% vs. 42.14%). The psychodynamic approach was likely to rely on case reports of fewer than three children. CONCLUSIONS: Any serious review of the literature should pool documents from several online databases, especially SCOPUS. In publications by only French authors, the psychodynamic approach seems predominant and the persistence of ADHD in adulthood is overlooked. This may concur with the excessive delay observed in the diagnosis and treatment of children and adults in France compared to other European countries.

An aid for diagnosing attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder at adulthood: psychometric properties of the French versions of two Wender Utah Rating Scales (WURS-25 and WURS-K).

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects up to 4% of the adults in the general population. The Utah criteria were devised in the 1970s to help a retrospective diagnosis of ADHD during childhood, a necessary but not sufficient condition for diagnosing ADHD at adulthood. A sample of 466 adults was collected from a referral center and a large university. We investigated the psychometric properties (reliability and factor structure) of the original WURS-25 and the WURS-K, two shortened versions of the Wender Utah Rating Scale. These scales have similar psychometric properties; both have a 3-factor structure with only the first two factors highly and positively correlated. The third factor in the WURS-K, antisocial behavior, is less specific to the construct of ADHD than the third factor in the WURS-25, mood/self-esteem. The 18-item Adult ADHD Self-Rating Scale (ASRS) was used as a screening tool for actual ADHD. The composite total scores and the factorial scores correlated moderately with ASRS total and subscores. Research is warranted to assess the cutoff scores against a diagnosis of ADHD using a structured interview.

Inattentive symptoms of ADHD are related to evening orientation.

OBJECTIVE: Morningness is a stable characteristic of individuals, related to impulsivity and novelty seeking. The evening orientation is a risk factor for psychiatric conditions such as depression and personality disorders. The authors hypothesized that adults suspected of having ADHD are more evening oriented than adults without ADHD. METHOD: Exploratory factor analyses were performed on the polychoric correlation matrices of the full Adult Self-Report Scale for ADHD (ASRS) and the Composite Scale of Morningness (CSM). RESULTS: As expected, two factors for the ASRS--Inattention and Impulsivity- Hyperactivity--and three factors for the CSM were retrieved. All three CSM factors correlated negatively with ASRS Inattention, none with ASRS Impulsivity-Hyperactivity. CONCLUSION: Inattention is more strongly related to eveningness than is Impulsivity-Hyperactivity, and therefore eveningness may constitute an endophenotype of the predominantly inattentive subtype of ADHD. These findings need to be replicated in a patient population with a standardized assessment of sleep quality.

[Psychiatric emergencies in drug addiction]. / Urgences psychiatriques en addictologie.

The practitioner is very frequently confronted by emergencies in drug-addicted patients also having psychiatric symptomatology. In this article the authors will address emergencies related to alcohol (notably intoxication, pre-DTs and the encephalopathies); emergencies related to cannabis (notably intoxication, psychotic states and panic attacks); and emergencies related to other psycho-active substances (overdoses, drug-withdrawal, psychiatric complications related to cocaine or amphetamines). In the domain of drug addiction, as in psychiatry, the practitioner must give as much importance to the organisation of the long-term healthcare plan for the drug addict, ulterior to the management of the immediate emergency. For example, whereas 90% of subjects presenting to the emergency department for acute alcoholic intoxication have a pathological consumption of alcohol (abuse or dependance), management of the alcoholism is proposed in only 2% of them.