Adults With High Levels Of ADHD Traits At Greater Risk Of Anxiety & Depression Than Autistic Adults

According to a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports, adults who experience high levels of ADHD symptoms — like hyperactivity, impulsivity, absent-mindedness, emotional dysregulation, executive dysfunction, and difficulties in regulating and allocating attention — are at a far higher risk of suffering from depression and anxiety than autistic adults.

Punit Shah, a senior author of the study and an associate professor at the University of Bath says the term “executive function” refers to a person’s ability to plan and respond to the world around us. Over the years, researchers have found that autistic individuals might be able to plan and execute certain tasks, but those with ADHD are more prone to inhibiting responses or not doing certain things.

“Because the inhibition difficulties have been more closely linked to depression and anxiety, this might explain why ADHD is more linked to poor mental health than autism. In other words, ADHD and depression and anxiety might involve more overlap between certain mental processes,” explains Shah.

To add to that, co-occurring depression and anxiety has repeatedly been associated with greater social difficulties in people with ADHD. That, in turn, can make it challenging to differentiate between autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and ADHD. Also, ADHD and ASD often co-occur. It is estimated that around 28% of autistic individuals have ADHD as well that is referred to as “emotional and attentional atypicalities.”

“There is little empirical research on this topic and almost nothing in adults, despite indications that the prevalence of anxiety and depression increases notably in adulthood in these clinical populations,” lead author Luca Hargitai, a PhD researcher at the University of Bath in the UK, and colleagues added in the study.

The team used a website called Prolific to find 504 adult participants (51% were women and 49% men) based in the UK. They were between 18-79 years old. All of them completed gold-standard questionnaires which are used for diagnosing and identifying autistic traits and ADHD traits.

They found that ADHD traits were “highly predictive” of severe anxiety and depression. And the higher the levels of ADHD traits, more likely it became for those individuals to experience severe mental illnesses. Their analytical techniques further highlighted that ADHD personality traits are more strongly linked to depression and anxiety than autistic traits.

“To our knowledge, this is the first evidence that ADHD traits are more predictive of internalising problems than ASD traits. While its novelty might appear surprising, it is reflective of the dearth of research on this topic. Unfortunately, ASD has often been prioritised over ADHD in both research on internalising problems and clinical practice, particularly for anxiety,” the researchers concluded.

“This has led to major gaps in the literature, which this study has helped to address,” they added. “Our findings suggest that the management of ADHD traits in adults, with or without ASD traits, has potential to reduce to reduce internalising problems, which could supplement clinical interventions directly targeting anxiety and depression (e.g., anti-depressant medications; talking therapies).”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that in the United States, around 9.8% of children were diagnosed with ADHD from 2016 to 2019. Whereas the overall prevalence of adult ADHD globally is 4.4% as per data released by the National Institute of Mental Health. To date, fewer women (3.2%) are diagnosed with ADHD than men (5.4%). In the U.S. far more adults have received an ADHD diagnosis as the estimated lifetime prevalence is currently at 8.1%. For adult with high levels of ADHD traits, getting a diagnosis still remains an uphill battle due to lack of access to trained psychiatrists and psychologists who specialize in neurodevelopmental conditions.