Latest research discloses that the majority of children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) will have lifelong symptoms.
Academics from around the world have found that only 10% of children with ADHD tend to recover from the condition during their youth.
The study has discredited previous reports that have claimed that only 50% of childhood ADHD cases continue into adulthood.
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Main author, Professor Margaret Sibley said: “The belief that 50% of children outgrow ADHD was first put forward in the mid-1990s, but most studies only re-connected with the kids one time in adulthood.
“So, researchers didn’t get to see that the ADHD that they thought had gone away actually does come back.”
During the study, the team of scientists examined 558 children with ADHD for 16 years to measure how many of the group outgrew their condition as they got older.
To allow the academics to regularly evaluate whether symptoms of ADHD were still present, each participant was assessed every other year between the age of eight and 25.
As part of the trial, the children’s relatives and teachers also provided the researchers with an insight of how the participants behaved outside of the study.
“Although intermittent periods of remission can be expected in most cases, 90% of children with ADHD in the Multimodal Treatment Study of ADHD continued to experience residual symptoms into young adulthood,” stated the researchers.
Symptoms of ADHD are usually classified into two types of behavioural problems: inattentiveness and hyperactivity and impulsiveness, with most people presenting symptoms from both categories.
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In most cases, symptoms of ADHD are noticeable in children before the age of six, but it does affect each child differently.
According to the academics, between 5% and 10% of the US population are diagnosed with the hyperactive condition, with many public figures also sharing their ADHD diagnoses, such as olympic athletes Simone Biles and Michael Phelps.
The entire research study can now be accessed in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
