Alarming headlines, based on a recent study, declare that diagnosis with ADHD doubles the risk of early death. Psychiatrist Stephen Faraone, commenting on the original study published in the Lancet, concludes that: “for clinicians early diagnosis and treatment should become the rule rather than the exception.” This conclusion represents a false assumption that the deaths occurred in cases that were not treated.
The large cohort study in Denmark, that looked at records of 2 million individuals, identified over 32,000 who had been diagnosed with ADHD and then calculated the “all cause mortality rate.” There is no data available about whether or not they were treated. As ADHD is commonly treated with stimulant medication, it is unlikely that all of these cases were untreated. It is more likely that many, if not most, were treated with medication. If that were the case, the conclusion could be the exact opposite — namely that diagnosis and treatment with stimulant medication is associated with increased risk of early death. In that case, careful re-assessment of the way we conceptualize and treat problems of attention would be in order.
If diagnosis and treatment with stimulants is associated with increased risk of early death, how would we make sense of this finding? The following story offers an example.
[For more of this story, written by Claudia Gold, go to http://www.madinamerica.com/20...dhd-and-early-death/]
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