(Press-News.org) WASHINGTON – Girls with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are significantly more likely to attempt suicide or injure themselves as young adults than girls who do not have ADHD, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
Young women diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as girls, particularly the type with early signs of impulsivity, were three to four times more likely to attempt suicide and two to three times more likely to report injuring themselves than comparable young women in a control group, according to the findings, published online in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.
"ADHD can signal future psychological problems for girls as they are entering adulthood," said the study's lead author, Stephen Hinshaw, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "Our findings reinforce the idea that ADHD in girls is particularly severe and can have serious public health implications."
The first wave of the study comprised 228 girls ages 6 to 12 in the San Francisco Bay area. A total of 53 percent were white, 27 percent were African-American, 11 percent were Latina and 9 percent were Asian-American. The girls were recruited from schools, mental health centers, pediatric practices and community advertisements. They went through extensive diagnostic assessments, after which 140 girls were diagnosed with ADHD, while the rest were part of a control group. Forty-seven girls were diagnosed with ADHD-inattentive, a subtype of ADHD that means the girls are less likely to act out and can sit quietly but have a hard time paying attention. Ninety three had ADHD-combined, a combination of hyperactive, impulsive and inattentive symptoms. ADHD-combined is the most common subtype of ADHD referred for treatment.
After the initial diagnostic tests, the researchers followed up at year five and at year 10 with a full day of clinical assessments of each girl. They also conducted telephone interviews or home visits if necessary. Of the original sample, 95 percent of the girls were retained at the 10-year follow-up, when the participants were between the ages of 17 and 24. They and their families were questioned about a range of life problems, including any substance use, suicide attempts, self-injury and depressive symptoms. The young women were also tested for academic achievement and neuropsychological functioning.
Of the participants diagnosed with ADHD-combined, 22 percent reported at least one suicide attempt at the 10-year follow-up, compared to 8 percent of those with ADHD-inattentive and 6 percent of the control group. Girls in the ADHD-combined group were significantly more likely to injure themselves, with 51 percent reporting actions such as scratching, cutting, burning or hitting themselves. That compared to 19 percent in the control group and 29 percent in the ADHD-inattentive group.
There were no significant differences in substance use across the groups; however, the girls diagnosed with ADHD as children were more likely to continue to have symptoms of ADHD, more psychiatric problems and far greater use of psychological services, the study found.
"ADHD in girls and women carries a particularly high risk of internalizing, even self-harmful behavior patterns," said Hinshaw. "We know that girls with ADHD-combined are more likely to be impulsive and have less control over their actions, which could help explain these distressing findings."
###
Article: "Prospective Follow-Up of Girls With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Into Early Adulthood: Continuing Impairment Includes Elevated Risk for Suicide Attempts and Self-Injury," Stephen P. Hinshaw, PhD, Elizabeth B. Owens, PhD, and Christine Zalecki, PhD, University of California, Berkeley; Suzanne Perrigue Huggins, PhD, University of Maryland; Adriana J. Montenegro-Nevado, PhD, Palo Alto University; Emily Schrodek, PhD, and Erika N. Swanson, PhD, University of California, Berkeley; Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, online.
Full text of the article is available from the APA Public Affairs Office and at
http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/ccp-ofp-hinshaw.pdf
Contact: Stephen Hinshaw, hinshaw@berkeley.edu, 510-206-2295.
The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world's largest association of psychologists. APA's membership includes more than 137,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people's lives.
END
Current drug therapy for patients with HIV is unable to control the complete replication of the virus in the brain. The drugs therefore do not have any effect against the complications associated with neurocognitive impairment in patients with HIV. New research by Joseph Steiner and colleagues from Johns Hopkins University has discovered that a group of plant polyphenols known as catechins, which naturally occur in green tea and the seed of the cacao tree, may help in the prevention of these neurological complications. Their work is published online in Springer's Journal ...
Researchers in Leuven (VIB/KU Leuven) have confirmed their hypothesis that normalizing blood vessels by blocking oxygen sensor PHD2 would make chemotherapy more effective. They also demonstrated for the first time that this strategy would reduce the harmful side effects of chemotherapy on healthy organs.
Limited success of chemotherapy
The effectiveness of chemotherapy is first and foremost limited by the difficulties of delivering the anticancer drugs to the actual tumor. Tumors are characterized by abnormally shaped blood vessels – they are irregular in shape, have ...
TEMPE, Ariz. – Earthquakes are among the most destructive and common of geologic phenomena. Several million earthquakes are estimated to occur worldwide each year (the vast majority are too small to feel, but their motions can be measured by arrays of seismometers). Historically, most of Arizona has experienced low levels of recorded seismicity, with infrequent moderate and large earthquakes in the state. Comprehensive analyses of seismicity within Arizona have not been previously possible due to a lack of seismic stations in most regions, contributing to the perception ...
Experts agree that, more than ever before, modern wars will be fought in the cyber zone, targeting an enemy's communications technology to cause untold damage. Now a Tel Aviv University researcher is suggesting that the same tactics should be employed in the battle against one of the body's deadliest enemies — cancer.
In an article published in Trends in Microbiology, Prof. Eshel Ben-Jacob of TAU's School of Physics and Astronomy and Prof. Herbert Levine of Rice University, long-time bacteria researchers, and Prof. Donald Coffey of Johns Hopkins University, a renowned ...
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Connecting the dots between two molecules whose levels are decreased in depression and increased by current antidepressants could yield new therapies, researchers say.
Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that enables brain cells to communicate and brain-derived neurotropic factor, or BDNF, is a brain-nourishing molecule that also aids connectivity. Popular antidepressants such as Prozac, developed to increase levels of serotonin, have recently been found to also increase BDNF levels, said Dr. Anilkumar Pillai, neuroscientist at the Medical College of Georgia ...
New Rochelle, NY, August 14, 2012—Community pharmacies with specially trained staff to provide HIV services can help HIV-infected individuals be more compliant with their essential antiviral drug regimens and hence improve patient outcomes. Users of HIV-specialized Walgreen pharmacies across the U.S. had significantly greater adherence to and persistence with their therapeutic drug regimens according to a study published in AIDS Patient Care and STDs, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the AIDS Patient Care ...
UPTON, NY - Scientists taking advantage of the versatility and new capabilities of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), an atom smasher at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, have observed first glimpses of a possible boundary separating ordinary nuclear matter, composed of protons and neutrons, from the seething soup of their constituent quarks and gluons that permeated the early universe some 14 billion years ago. Though RHIC physicists have been creating and studying this primordial quark-gluon plasma (QGP) for some time, the latest ...
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Soil microbes are impulsive. So much so that they help plants face the challenges of a rapidly changing climate.
Jen Lau and Jay Lennon, Michigan State University biologists studied how plants and microbes work together to help plants survive the effects of global changes, such as increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations, warmer temperatures and altered precipitation patterns. The results, appearing in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that microbes in the ground not only interact with plants, but they ...
Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center are reporting promising results from laboratory and animal experiments involving a new combination therapy for multiple myeloma, the second most common form of blood cancer.
The study published online in the journal Cancer Research details a dramatic increase in multiple myeloma cell death caused by a combination of the drugs obatoclax and flavopiridol. The researchers, led by Steven Grant, M.D., Shirley Carter Olsson and Sture Gordon Olsson Chair in Oncology Research, associate director for translational ...
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Tissue implants made of cells grown on a sponge-like scaffold have been shown in clinical trials to help heal arteries scarred by atherosclerosis and other vascular diseases. However, it has been unclear why some implants work better than others.
MIT researchers led by Elazer Edelman, the Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Professor of Health Sciences and Technology, have now shown that implanted cells' therapeutic properties depend on their shape, which is determined by the type of scaffold on which they are grown. The work could allow scientists to ...
