Support for LAist comes from
Audience-funded nonprofit news
Stay Connected
Audience-funded nonprofit news
Listen
Podcasts Take Two
Could childhood trauma lead to a misdiagnosis of ADHD?
solid orange rectangular banner
()
Jul 8, 2014
Listen 6:12
Could childhood trauma lead to a misdiagnosis of ADHD?
According to a new study, One in nine — that's 6.4 million — U.S. children currently has a diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
The number of ADHD prescriptions written for people in the U.S. between the ages of 20 and 39 has more than doubled since 2007.
ADHD prescriptions.
(
Mario Tama/Getty Images
)

According to a new study, One in nine — that's 6.4 million — U.S. children currently has a diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

One in nine U.S. children currently has a diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. And, according to a new study, some of those could be misdiagnosed.

This new research confirms what many psychologists have seen in their own practices: that a child with an ADHD diagnosis is most likely to have also experienced prolonged stress or trauma in early life, whether it's poverty, divorce, violence or family substance abuse.

Dr. Caelan Kuban, director of The National Institute for Trauma and Loss in Children, is one of those practitioners who has witnessed this type of misdiagnosis. She joins Take Two to talk about whether children who have experienced trauma are being misdiagnosed with ADHD.