Adult Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: One Year Follow up (Report‪)‬

Longitudinal studies in children with attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and retrospective studies in adults with ADHD have shown that the disorder persists in to adulthood and is predictive of negative future outcome often with serious consequences (1,2). However, prevalence of the ADHD in adults and the rate of persistence of symptoms across the lifespan are heterogeneous, raising questions about the validity of the diagnosis. Adult ADHD is also characterized by controversy due to lack of agreement on appropriate diagnostic criteria and the realization that diagnosis is complicated by symptom overlap with a number of other disorders (3). Studies of children and adolescent with ADHD have demonstrated stability of the diagnosis at follow up (4) but the same information is not available for adults who have been diagnosed with ADHD using standard diagnostic procedures. Childhood ADHD has been studied in India and other Asian countries but not adult ADHD. Sitholey et al (5) have carried out an exploratory clinical phenomenological study of adult ADHD. To our knowledge, in India, there is no short or long term follow up research on adult ADHD as regards its phenomenology, diagnostic stability, comorbidity, impairment caused by it and need for treatment. Therefore this one year follow up study of adult ADHD aims to assess its phenomenology, course, stability of diagnosis, comorbidity and global functioning of the affected persons.