Better Night's Sleep May Help Kids With ADHD

BY SHEREEN LEHMAN Thu Feb 19, 2015 12:33pm EST (Reuters Health) - Kids with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and sleep problems showed slight improvement in their symptoms after undergoing a behavioral sleep intervention, Australian researchers say. The daytime improvement in ADHD symptoms was partly the result of the kids getting a better night’s sleep, and possibly of parents’ learning methods for dealing with behavior problems, the study found. “Our previous work found that sleep problems were common in children with ADHD and associated with poorer behavior, ADHD symptoms, quality of life and day-to-day functioning, such as getting ready for school,” said lead author Dr. Harriet Hiscock, a pediatrician at Murdoch Children’s Research at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Victoria. “We also found that children with ADHD and sleep problems had poorer school attendance and their parents had poorer mental health and work attendance,” Hiscock told Reuters Health in an email. “We wanted to see if we could change some of these outcomes by improving the child’s sleep.” About five percent of U.S. children have ADHD, according to the American Psychiatric Association. Boys are more than twice as likely as girls to be diagnosed with ADHD, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For their study, published in The BMJ, Hiscock and colleagues enrolled the families of 244 children aged 5 to 12 with ADHD and sleep problems who att...
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