HEALTH

World of distraction: Adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

With heightened awareness of ADHD in children, some adults are seeing the same patterns in their own lives, prompting increasing numbers of parents to ask if the cognitive disorder runs in the family.

By Kathleen Phalen, AMNews correspondent. March 18, 2002.

Like a supernova, Thomas Apple has been a star and he has self-destructed. He was Nasdaq's vice president of marketing for 11 years. He developed executive program models for major corporations. He's an inventor, a risk-taker, a guy who knows how to get it done. But he is also impulsive, hurried, outspoken, distractible and disorganized. He's been divorced twice, walked off the job when it penned him in and, until a few years ago, this 48-year-old entrepreneur didn't understand why.

Now he knows. Apple has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, a neurobiological disorder that affects about 3% to 5% of children and 2% to 4% of adults. But like many adults with ADHD, Apple's problems went undetected during his childhood.

"Adults over age 30 or 35 may have slipped through the diagnostic net because we weren't as aware," says Matthew Keats, MD, a psychiatrist and medical director of Sentara Mental Health Management in Virginia Beach, Va.

But this trend is changing. Because health professionals are more aware of ADHD among children, physicians are also increasingly hearing concerns from adult patients who, as a result of the experiences of their sons and daughters, are beginning to understand that they might also have this disorder.

Historically ADHD was considered a childhood condition to be outgrown. But in the past decade, research has shown that symptoms persist into adulthood for about 50% of children with ADHD. But as people age, symptoms may manifest differently: Hyperactivity wanes, restlessness becomes internal and inattention sometimes intensifies. [...]

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