Relative Frequency of Psychiatric, Neurodevelopmental, and Somatic Symptoms as Reported by Mothers of Children with Auti
- PDF / 617,691 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 90 Downloads / 151 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Relative Frequency of Psychiatric, Neurodevelopmental, and Somatic Symptoms as Reported by Mothers of Children with Autism Compared with ADHD and Typical Samples Susan D. Mayes1 · Susan L. Calhoun1 · Raman Baweja1 · Daniel A. Waschbusch1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract No study has analyzed the relative occurrence of a broad range of symptoms reported by mothers of children with autism, ADHD-Combined, and ADHD-Inattentive and typical controls. Mothers rated 1436 children with autism, 1056 with ADHD without autism, and 186 controls, 2–17 years, on 41 internalizing, externalizing, neurodevelopmental, and somatic problems. Most children with autism had symptoms of ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, and expressive language disorder and almost half had dysgraphia and receptive language disorder. Symptom overlap between autism and ADHD-Combined was high. Clinicians specializing in autism and ADHD must have expertise in evaluating and treating these comorbidities identified as most problematic by mothers in order to relieve family concerns and develop treatment plans relevant to families. Keywords Autism · ADHD · Anxiety · Depression · Somatic problems · Neurodevelopment
Introduction It is well established that internalizing, externalizing, neurodevelopmental, and some somatic problems are significantly more common in children with autism and in children with ADHD than in the general population. However, it is not known which of these problems, relative to each other, are considered by mothers to be most problematic for their children. Studies report wildly discrepant prevalence rates for specific comorbid problems, and no study to date has simultaneously analyzed the relative frequency of a broad range of externalizing, internalizing, somatic, and neurodevelopmental symptoms in autism, ADHD, and typical samples. Many studies focusing on narrow symptom areas report that children with autism and children with ADHD are significantly at risk for specific problems, but in order to fully appreciate the degree of risk, symptoms need to be interpreted within a larger context. Therefore, our study * Raman Baweja [email protected] 1
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, Penn State College of Medicine, 500 University Dr., Hershey, PA 17033, USA
analyzes the frequency of symptoms relative to each other across a broad range of possible comorbid problems. The following review of studies provides a summary of symptoms associated with autism and with ADHD, which is the rationale for including these symptoms in our study. Most children with autism have ADHD, with rates of 59–83% across 13 studies (Joshi et al. 2017). Symptoms of autism are also common in children diagnosed with ADHD (Clark et al. 1999). Because of diagnostic overshadowing, failure to evaluate children for both conditions, and the preDSM-5 rule that ADHD could not be diagnosed in children with autism, there is a risk of missing autism
Data Loading...
