UK study finds low rate of Bipolar Disorder in ADHD youth
November 27, 2011 by Leslie E. Packer PhD
Filed under Featured, Research
One of the “hot” topics in recent years has been the comorbidity between ADHD and Bipolar Disorder – and how difficult some people find it to be clear about whether a child or adult has one, the other, or both.
When it comes to the rate of comorbidity (co-occurrence of the two disorders), results from studies have been all over the place, with one study suggesting that 94% of youth with Bipolar Disorder also have ADHD. Studies demonstrating high comorbidity rates of 80% or higher are not unusual, although there have been some studies – usually from non-U.S. samples – that find significantly lower rates. Hence, the range of estimates has been from 4% to 94%.
If you pose the question the other way, though, i.e., what percent of youth with ADHD also have Bipolar Disorder, studies report that 11-22% of ADHD youth also have Bipolar. In 2010, I visually summarized the results in a presentation this way:
If you have only been hearing about the high estimates, here’s more food for thought:
A study conducted in the U.K. of 200 youth with ADHD aged 6-18 years found that only one child, a 9-year-old boy, met diagnostic criteria for both ICD-10 hypomania and DSM-IV bipolar disorder not otherwise specified.
The study was published in the March 2011 issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry.
So… are we overdiagnosing Bipolar youth in the U.S. or is there some other explanation?
I was diagnosed with manic depressive (bipolar) disorder way back in 1982. Since then I have undertaking considerable research into the disorder. This research has been instrumental in teaching me to manage my disorder.
I certainly agree that bipolar literature presents a wide variety of results when it is checked against ADHD for comorbidity.