Implications of Co-occurrence Between ADHD and Anxiety in a Community-based Child Sample

The current study aimed to elucidate characteristics of co-occurring ADHD and anxiety in a community-based sample of children. Previous work has highlighted the prevalence and associated impairment of each condition alone, but less research has focused on the co-occurrence of these disorders.

The present study first sought to examine the prevalence of this co-occurrence in a sample of 2,257 school-age children. The study also compared academic, social, and adaptive impairment among children with ADHD alone, anxiety alone, both ADHD and anxiety, or neither condition. Lastly, the study explored sex differences in the prevalence of co-occurring ADHD and anxiety and their associated impairment.

Results supported previous findings surrounding prevalence of the co-occurrence, as children with ADHD were over twice as likely to exhibit elevated anxiety than children without ADHD. While ADHD was more common in boys, among all children with ADHD more girls displayed co-occurring anxiety. Both ADHD and anxiety were associated with impairment in nearly all domains of functioning, but children with both conditions broadly displayed the most functional impairment.

Results of the current study underscore the clinical relevance of the co-occurrence between ADHD and anxiety in children and suggest that future research is warranted to further investigate this phenomenon.