Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Kids with ADHD more likely to abuse alcohol

Strangely enough, from the same research group at WPIC that produced a big chunk of the research I used for term projects in Adolescent Health and Mental Health Policy classes last semester:

The 15- to 17-year-old children in the study with childhood ADHD reported being drunk 14 times, on average, in the previous year, versus only 1.8 times for age-matched teens who did not have childhood ADHD.

Fourteen percent of 15- to 17-year-olds with ADHD were diagnosed with alcohol abuse or dependence compared with none of the similarly aged subjects without ADHD.
My question would then be, how does effective ADHD treatment relate to allaying, if at all, the risk for substance abuse in ADHD teens? I might mail email the study author to see if her group has addressed/wondered about that as well.

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