There do not appear to be significant socioeconomic differences between responders and nonresponders nor do individual characteristics (age, gender, IQ, ADHD subtypes and symptoms, neuropsychological characteristics) predict treatment response. Nonresponders are unaffected by the medication or have severe side effects, in either case causing them to discontinue treatment even though they show the same symptoms as responders prior to treatment. The medical literature documents that 25 to 30 percent of treated individuals with ADHD are nonresponders. This study tests whether efficient medical treatment of ADHD affects children’s academic performance by utilizing a natural experiment. If ADHD affects educational outcomes negatively, successful treatment could reduce the negative educational consequences caused by ADHD. Although the use of these drugs is not uncontroversial, drug therapy has been consistently shown to address core symptoms among children with moderate to severe ADHD. One of the modal ways to address the behavioral problems related to ADHD is through medical treatment with psychotropic drugs. Thus, beyond the direct effect on cognitive abilities, ADHD may cause lower educational achievement and attainment through affecting life circumstances outside the classroom, leaving affected children double disadvantaged. An emerging body of work demonstrates that undiagnosed or untreated ADHD leads to increased family instability, such as increased risk of parental union dissolution and for entering an out-of-home placement.
In addition, ADHD may also negatively affect the learning environment in children’s homes. Recent research has linked ADHD to delayed maturation of parts of the brain directly related to cognition, indicating a direct biological link between ADHD and low educational achievement. Children with ADHD have lower grade point average (GPA), do worse on academic tests, have higher retention rates and absenteeism, and have lower high school and college completion rates. Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) represents one such mental health problem, which infers substantial individual and societal costs if left untreated. Mental health problems in childhood have substantial consequences for later life because such problems are associated with lower educational achievement and attainment. One in five individuals experiences the onset of mental health problems before reaching adulthood. 10-093105.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. įunding: This work was supported by the Danish Strategic Research Council, grant no. Requests for data may be sent to Statistics Denmark: or the Danish Data Protection Agency. University-based Danish scientific organisations can be authorized to work with data within Statistics Denmark and such organisation can provide access to individual scientists inside and outside of Denmark. This state organisation holds the data used for this study. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: Due to restrictions related to Danish law and protecting patient privacy, the combined set of data as used in this study can only be made available through a trusted third party, Statistics Denmark. Received: ApAccepted: NovemPublished: November 29, 2018Ĭopyright: © 2018 Keilow et al. PLoS ONE 13(11):Įditor: Nouchine Hadjikhani, Harvard Medical School, UNITED STATES Placebo regressions indicate that a causal interpretation of our findings is plausible.Ĭitation: Keilow M, Holm A, Fallesen P (2018) Medical treatment of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and children’s academic performance. The results demonstrate that medical treatment may mitigate the negative social consequences of ADHD.
ADHD MEDICATION FULL
We find significant effects of treatment on both exam and teacher evaluated GPAs: Compared to consistent treatment, part or full discontinuation of treatment has large significant negative effects reducing teacher evaluation and exam GPA with. Using administrative register data on children, who begin medical treatment, we conduct a natural experiment and exploit plausible exogenous variation in medical nonresponse to estimate the effect of medical treatment on school-leaving GPA. We use Danish administrative register data to study the impact of medical treatment of ADHD on children’s academic performance assessed by student grade point average (GPA). Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is negatively associated with a range of academic achievement measures.
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