ADHD Linked to Higher Mortality, Study Finds
Mortality Among People with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
A JAMA Network Open study examines mortality rates among people diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, drawing discussion on Hacker News about the risks tied to the condition. The linked paper itself could not be retrieved, so the thread centers on what the findings mean and how ADHD affects long-term health outcomes.
Mortality Among People with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
- AgentMasterRace
Absolutely, as someone diagnosed at 6, and 33 now. Being on medication allows me to actual live my life. Ive tried to be "normal" and not be medicated various times in my life, but it's just been bad every time. Our brains are wires differently, you can't just overcome it.
My family has a long history of alcohol and substance abuse, I'm the first to be diagnosed and medicated for ADHD. If you're not medicated and have ADHD the risk of substance abuse is much higher, and there is a strong link to alcoholics being undiagnosed with ADHD.
I'm always scared of the long term effects of the medication, but without it I can't work or hardly even function.. I'm not sure of these benefits another user mentioned, but whatever they are is not worth the trade off at all.
- user_7832
I misread mortality as morality and was exited for a second :‘)
Fun fact, now that you're here: adhd is severely over represented in prison populations. Several times the baseline general population rate.
- Scandiravian
Yet no insurance company will provide me with health insurance because I've taken ADHD medication within the last five years
If I stop taking my meds and let my mental health deteriorate for five years, they apparently think I'm less likely to be a net expense for them
- R_mand
I have ADHD, which to avoid boredom, “tells” me to do more risky things. Is it a surprise that life expectancy is lowered with higher risk? And that the ADHD medication lowers the risky bits therefore increasing life expectancy?
Question to my fellow ADHDers who take the meds, is fun still fun and happening? or has calmness become the new fun?
- rahimnathwani
This is marked on the page as an 'Original Investigation', but right below the title it says it's a 'Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis'.
I'm skeptical about meta analyses in general because, the times when I've dug into a meta analysis and traced the conclusions back to the original papers, I've always been disappointed, and ended up not being convinced of the conclusions of the meta analysis.
Anyway, I haven't done that exercise for this paper, but I will say:
- Although the authors say they did a "systematic review and meta-analysis of 19 studies", only 12 of the 19 papers are included in the meta analysis.
- Only one of the authors read all the studies they included ("Study quality was assessed by 1 reviewer.")
- That reviewer was Lucy Corrigan, BSc ("Full texts were screened (L.C.) against the same inclusion and exclusion criteria (165 articles)...")
Here is the abstract of one of the 12 studies they included (and marked as 'Good' quality, the highest rating they gave): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19485565.2021.2...
Here is what they found:
Discrete-time hazard analysis indicates that the log odds of mortality were significantly lower among 18 and 19 year old adults ever diagnosed with ADHD and significantly higher among 46 to 64 year old adults ever diagnosed with ADHD, with a crossover occurring at age 33.