Abstract
Studies have shown that the presence of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) causes great impairment in academic, social, and professional activities as well as in the quality of life (QoL) of its patients. Similarly, the impact caused by other chronic disorders, such as diabetes, in the patient's QoL has been emphasized in many studies. Despite its relevance, no study has yet investigated whether ADHD caregivers and diabetic patients would have similar QoL impairment. This study was conducted in order to compare the QoL scores among ADHD caregivers and diabetic patients. We evaluated 63 caregivers of ADHD children treated at the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Unit at the Federal University of SĂŁo Paulo (UPIA-UNIFESP) and 52 adult diabetic patients. Subjects were assessed with the World Health Organization quality of Life-Bref Version (WHOQOL-BREF), the Beck and Hamilton depression scales, and the Adult Self-Report Scale. When compared to the Brazilian normative data, ADHD caregivers had significantly lower scores in the social relations and environment WHOQOL domains. ADHD caregivers and diabetic patients had similar impairment in all WHOQOL domains except for the physical domain. ADHD affects the QoL of the patient's caregiver, with similar impairment, when compared to the QoL of diabetic patients. These results emphasize the need for assessing QoL of the caregivers as part of the treatment strategies. They also emphasize the need for future studies with larger sample sizes comparing how the QOL is impacted in different chronic disorders.
Highlights
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most frequent mental disorders in the pediatric population, with prevalence rates ranging from 5 to 7.1% [1, 2]
The mean age was 53.55 ± 10.61 years (Table 1). Because of this difference in age between the two groups and the relevance of this variable in quality of life (QoL) studies, age was used as a covariate in the correlation analyses and the comparisons between the ADHD and diabetes groups
Even though some studies have suggested that ADHD has an impact on the patient and in the QoL of their caregivers, we wanted to investigate whether this impact would be similar to the one caused by a chronic disease, such as diabetes
Summary
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most frequent mental disorders in the pediatric population, with prevalence rates ranging from 5 to 7.1% [1, 2]. ADHD core features are inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity symptoms, causing significant impairment to the patient [3] and frequently persisting until adulthood. Quality of Life of Caregivers of ADHD Children increases family, marital, and parental problems, reduces parenting efficacy, and increases the level of parental stress [5]. Parents of ADHD children have higher guilt, increased vulnerability to depression [6], greater alcohol consumption, and worse quality of life (QoL) [7, 8]. In studies using the World Health Organization Quality of LifeBref Form (WHOQOL-Bref), one of the most used instruments to assess QoL, the scores are frequently lower in patients with chronic diseases, such as diabetes [9, 15,16,17]
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