Research shows the biggest predictors of shorter life expectancy in adults with ADHD are factors including lower incomes, a greater likelihood of smoking, less exercise, poorer nutrition and risky driving.
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Chris Winsor/Getty Images
A large new study finds adults diagnosed with ADHD live shorter lives than they should.
The research, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, found that men diagnosed with ADHD were dying roughly 7 years younger compared to their counterparts without a diagnosis of ADHD. Women with ADHD lived an average of about 9 years less.
“It is deeply concerning that some adults with diagnosed ADHD are living shorter lives than they should,” senior study author Josh Stott, a professor of aging and clinical psychology at University College London, said in a statement.
ADHD, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, is a developmental disorder that is commonly diagnosed in childhood and causes inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. It often persists into adulthood.
The study looked at primary care data for more than 30,000 adults diagnosed with ADHD in the U.K. The researchers compared this group with more than 300,000 participants without ADHD, who were matched by age, sex, and primary care practice. The researchers used mortality data to model what the death rate would be for adults with ADHD across the lifespan of the population.
“It’s a very important article,” Russell Barkley, a retired clinical professor of psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center, said of the findings.
Barkley authored a 2019 study that also found children with ADHD who were followed into adulthood had a shorter life expectancy of about 8.4 years, as well as more years of unhealthy living. While Barkley’s study used different methodology, “we came to very similar conclusions,” he notes in a review of the new findings posted on YouTube.
Barkley’s study found that the biggest predictors of shorter life expectancy in adults with ADHD were factors including lower incomes, fewer years of education, a greater likelihood of smoking, shorter sleep duration, less exercise, poorer nutrition and risky driving. He notes that most of these factors are linked to impulsivity — which can be treated.
“These factors – virtually all of them can be changed,” Barkley says. “Change the factor [and] you change the life expectancy. So none of this is cast in stone.”
The results of the new study are in line with other research in the U.S. and elsewhere that has found untreated ADHD raises the risk of serious health problems such as diabetes and heart disease, as well as early death through accidental injury and death by suicide, says Max Wiznitzer, a professor of pediatric neurology at Case Western Reserve University.
“It’s not the ADHD, it’s the impact of the ADHD on how you live,” says Wiznitzer, who is also co-chair of the professional advisory board for CHADD, a nonprofit education and advocacy group for people with ADHD. “Because you’re impulsive, you don’t make the best choices.”
For example, people with ADHD might forget to take medications for diabetes or to make follow-up appointments with their doctor, he says.
Wiznitzer says the new findings underscore the importance of treating ADHD in adults as well as children – not just with medications but also with behavioral therapy that teaches strategies to manage executive function problems that are a hallmark of the condition.
“If you treat the ADHD, if you teach them the life skills that they need in order to work with the executive function difficulties so that they’re modifiable, that lessens the risk of all the complications that can develop,” he says.
