Rates of ADHD Diagnosis: Age, Gender, and Race – Education & Teacher Conferences Skip to main content

Rates of ADHD Diagnosis: Age, Gender, and Race

AdobeStock_78492564_Credit

Dr. David Rabiner offers a helpful summary of trends in ADHD diagnoses.

The short version: rates of diagnosis continue to increase.

The longer version: depending how you analyze the categories, you get very different results. For children younger than 5, the rates are — in fact — falling. For adults over 65, however, the rate rose 348% from 2008-9 to 2012-13.

(That is not a typo: 348%).

One important point as you review these data: percentages are interesting, but so too are the absolute numbers. Diagnoses among those over 65 can increase so much as a percentage because the absolute numbers are relatively low.

By the way: analysis by gender shows an interesting pattern. Among adults, both diagnosis and medication are increasing faster for men than women. Among children, however, that pattern is reversed.


Recent Blogs

The Neuroscience Trap: When Skeptics Stop Being Skeptical
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson

I collaborated on this post with Dr. Cindy Nebel. Her...

I Take It All Back: Research on “Expressive Writing” Has Evolved
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson

I spend my days giving research-informed advice to teachers and...

The Creativity Choice: The Science of Making Decisions to Turn Ideas into Action by Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Erik Jahner, PhD
Erik Jahner, PhD

It happened just this morning! I was watching my favorite...