Each month our editorial team sifts through hundreds of papers and curates notable findings—for practitioners and informed readers who want to stay current with the evidence. Subscribe to the monthly Research Digest for expert analysis and concise summaries of key papers.
Our findings suggest that geographic location plays a limited role in the reasons for the large variability of ADHD/HD prevalence estimates worldwide. Instead, this variability seems to be explained primarily by the methodological characteristics of studies.
The authors pooled results from 61 cross-sectional studies to estimate how common ADHD is in children and adolescents worldwide. They found a pooled prevalence of 7.6% (95% CI 6.1–9.4%) in children aged 3–12 (from 96,907 children) and 5.6% (95% CI 4.8–7%) in adolescents aged 12–18. Prevalence estimates varied by age…
The authors combined results from 42 studies of people in prison to estimate how common ADHD is in those groups. Using formal diagnostic interviews, the overall ADHD rate was about 25.5%. Reported rates were higher when studies used screening tools or when adults recalled childhood ADHD. The review found much…
This study combined results from 14 research papers to see whether mindfulness programs help adults with ADHD. The pooled data covered 834 adults and came from searches of PsycINFO, PubMed, SCOPUS, and ERIC up to July 2019. Overall, the meta-analysis found that mindfulness-based interventions reduced ADHD symptoms, lowered depression, and…
This paper combined nine studies with 81,234 children to look at screen time and ADHD. Children who had screen time of 2 hours a day or more had higher odds of ADHD than those with less than 2 hours (odds ratio 1.51, 95% confidence interval 1.20–1.90). The authors reported a…
This systematic review and meta-analysis combined 311 clinical studies (653,558 children and 43,311 adults) up to August 1, 2023. It found that ADHD/hyperkinetic disorder occurred in 32.4% (95% CI 31–34%) of pediatric patients and 21.4% (95% CI 20–23%) of adult patients seen in clinical settings — about 8–9 times higher…
The review found that adults generally felt ADHD medications reduced their ADHD symptoms. But experiences differed a lot because of social, psychological, and physical side effects. People talked about taking medicines in the context of “fitting in” at school, work, and with family and friends. That idea of fitting in…
