A Call for Research on the Validity of the Age-of-Onset Criterion Application in Older Adults Being Evaluated for ADHD: A Review of the Literature in Clinical and Cognitive Psychology.

A Call for Research on the Validity of the Age-of-Onset Criterion Application in Older Adults Being Evaluated for ADHD: A Review of the Literature in Clinical and Cognitive Psychology. Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2020 Nov 02;: Authors: Sharma MJ, Lavoie S, Callahan BL Abstract Roughly 3% of adults aged 50 years or older experience significant symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They are often diagnosed for the first time in later adulthood, because ADHD is a relatively new diagnosis with only recent awareness of later-life cases, and because many symptomatic adults have high early-life functioning due to supportive environmental and social structures. Current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 criteria require evidence of symptom onset prior to age 12, which rests on self-report in older adults for whom ancillary sources are unavailable or unreliable. In this review, we summarize evidence from several bodies of literature which suggest this criterion may be invalid in older adults. The authors hypothesize that demonstrating childhood symptom onset in older adults is not feasible (i.e., no awareness of ADHD prior to 1970; no good current ancillary sources of childhood behaviors), unreliable (i.e., severely flawed retrospective self-report) and unethical (i.e., unreasonable denial of support to people who need it, with demonstrated poor outcomes associated with untreated ADHD in adults). The a...
Source: Am J Geriatr Psychia... - Category: Geriatrics Authors: Tags: Am J Geriatr Psychiatry Source Type: research