Youngest children in school year 'more likely' to get ADHD diagnosis

Conclusion Previous studies have provided mixed findings on whether age in the school year is linked with ADHD. This new study benefits from its use of a large quantity of data. It found some interesting trends, and suggests younger children in any given school year are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. This finding seems plausible. You can imagine that younger children may find it harder to keep up in a class with those almost a year older than themselves and may therefore get distracted more easily. However, it is unclear how well these trends apply to the UK population for several reasons: In Finland the school year is structured slightly differently and children start school at a later age than they do in the UK. This means that children in the UK are exposed to the school environment at a different point in their development, which in turn could affect their behaviour. The researchers state that Finland has relatively low diagnosis rates of ADHD and suggest that this is due to a more conservative approach to diagnosis. So it might be hard to compare the numbers of children who have been diagnosed with ADHD across the two countries. As the researchers noted, the number of diagnoses may not be completely accurate. Teachers may have a role in the initial referral of children to be assessed for ADHD. This could lead to under-diagnosis of ADHD if some teachers do not recognise possible signs of ADHD for some children. Perhaps most importantly, as a cross-sectional study,...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Pregnancy/child Source Type: news