Volume 2, #10, April 2004

AD/HD Survey Results – an overview

by Andrea Collins

First of all I would like to thank the National Center for Gender Issues and AD/HD and ADDvance magazine for publishing an article on my study and inviting readers to participate. Secondly, I would like to thank Betsy Davenport, PhD for working so closely and patiently with me over the past few months. And of course I sincerely appreciate the readers who shared their personal information and took the time to answer the survey questions.

Conducting this study has proven to be an interesting experience for me, and the compilation of information for my independent study submission continues to multiply. True to my AD/HD form, I have the most difficulty ending my study! I keep finding facets of the data that I want to run an analysis on. I have spent countless hours navigating through spreadsheets and statistical software…I just can’t stop thinking! For this issue, however, I’ll save your computer space and offer a synopsis of the replies.

Who?
One hundred six females diagnosed with AD/HD took the survey. Fifty-two percent are diagnosed inattentive type, five percent are hyperactive, and forty-three percent are combined type. This is consistent with expert claims that the majority of girls are of the Inattentive type. Their ages range from nine to seventy with a mean age of forty-two and a median age of forty-four. Sixty-two percent of the respondents have children of their own.

One of the most interesting finds was the “age at diagnosis” category, which offered an average age of 42! The chart below shows the different age levels at which the women were diagnosed with 64% of participants diagnosed after age 40!

Attributes
There were 21 primary attributes that respondents evaluated to indicate the importance of those features to them. The attributes were then ranked in sets of three and finally ranked in order of major category. In short, this information related that what is most important to patients is the effectiveness of their medication in treating their mental and emotional symptoms. This ranking supports the factor analysis in that mental and emotional control took precedence over side effects, brand, price, or “how” the medication worked. Only the absence of sexual side effects ranked in the first category as being among important characteristics patients desired. (Translation: sex is important to us!)

The following table summarizes the categories of attributes in order ranked by respondents:

Of the 106 females who took the study, 51 had children with some form of AD/HD and 55 were childless. Of the respondents, 40% had a father diagnosed with some form of AD/HD and 35% had a mother diagnosed with some form of AD/HD. These seem like low numbers for parent diagnosis. We know that study and accurate diagnosis of AD/HD have been relatively recent; it is probable that the majority of our parents were never officially diagnosed by a doctor. I am still running analysis for links to heredity, AD/HD type, or generational characteristics.

Conditions
There was some correlation between anxiety and depression; bipolar disorder and behavior disorder; and posttraumatic stress disorder and behavior disorder. Other disorders present included dysthymia (3 responses) fibromyalgia (2 responses), premenstrual disorders/conditions (2 responses), mood and panic disorder (1 response each). One prevalent observation is that many of us suffer from depression in varying degrees and are treating it.

Medications
The medications taken by the sample were quite varied and represented in the pie chart. There did not seem to be any significant correlation between the type of med taken and the ADHD diagnosis, this in part could be caused by the large variety of meds taken or the number of responses.
Interesting to note, however, is that the majority of respondents (over 56%) are taking more than one drug to treat their condition. The graph below shows how many meds are being taken simultaneously. Over 7% of the group is not treating their condition with meds.

Substance Abuse/Depression
It was notable that in this sample there did not seem to be a correlation between substance abuse in first and second generation and depression. The chart below summarizes the three elements. The accuracy of these results of course depends on the current accurate diagnosis of individuals. The presence of alcoholism/substance abuse or depression may be a subjective judgment in some cases.

For more information regarding the study, you can contact me at acollins309@adelphia.net. Thanks again for your interest!

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