Child: month of birth increased the risk for ADHD diagnosis

Children born in August and therefore often younger are enrolled in school, more often get an ADHD diagnosis. May be made to them misdiagnosis, because they appear in comparison to older classmates are immature.

The time of school Enrollment appears to play a role in the diagnosis of attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) In children, the celebrations in August birthday, was found to be 30 percent more likely to have ADHD than their older classmates, as researchers in the New England Journal of Medicine reports. 85 out of 100,000 in August-born children received the results of the study found that an ADHD diagnosis, whereas it was only 64 out of 100,000 in September, children born in the case.

"Our results suggest that a large number of children überdiagnostiziert due to ADHD and unnecessarily treated, because they PAL in comparison to their older class in the early elementary school years relatively immature sind", Professor Timothy Layton, from the Blavatnik Institute, Harvard Medical School, USA says. An age difference of almost one year could result in young children to a significantly different behavior.

ADHD diagnoses have increased in the last 20 years solid. In the United States in 2016, more than 5 percent of all children are medically treated. The timing of the Enrolment will be governed in most States by dates, in the USA it is 1. September. For the study, the incidence of ADHD diagnoses in children who were born in August, with those of children compared to have been in the September birthday. A total of 407.000 children who were born between 2007 and 2009 were observed until the end of 2015.

ZOU