Meta-analysis of quality of life in children and adolescents with ADHD: By both parent proxy-report and child self-report using PedsQL™.
ADHD slashes kids’ quality of life most in emotional, social and school domains—collect both parent and child PedsQL™ scores to capture the full impact.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team pooled 42 studies that used the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory™ with kids who have ADHD.
They compared parent-proxy scores and child self-report scores to see where life quality drops the most.
What they found
ADHD cuts psychosocial quality of life by a large margin and physical quality by a medium margin.
Parents and kids gave matching ratings—no need to pick one over the other.
How this fits with other research
Lin et al. (2015) extends these numbers to adults, showing the same PedsQL™ gaps even when symptoms start as late as age 12.
Gau et al. (2013) digs into why psychosocial scores crash: teens with ADHD feel less warmth and more control from moms, feeding the social pain.
Hagopian et al. (2000) seems to contradict the high parent-child agreement found here, but their single-case look asked kids to detect medication effects—much harder than rating feelings, so the methods differ.
Why it matters
Use both parent and child PedsQL™ forms at intake to capture the full hit across emotional, social and school domains. Flag low psychosocial scores early; they signal risk for family stress and peer rejection that can sabotage your behavior plan.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a prevalent developmental disorder that seriously and negatively impacts a child's health-related quality of life (HRQOL). However, no meta-analysis has been conducted to examine the magnitude of impact, domains affected and factors moderating the impact. This review included nine studies that compared HRQOL of children or adolescents with ADHD with those with typical development using both child self-reports and parent proxy-reports. Seven among nine studies were meta-analytically synthesized to examine the degree of impact of ADHD on children and adolescents, parent-child discrepancy, and the moderators. The results indicate that ADHD impact a child's or adolescent's HRQOL negatively with a moderate effect in physical and a severe effect in psychosocial (i.e., emotional, social, and school) domains. Parental ratings of overall HRQOL in children or adolescents with ADHD were not significantly different from child's ratings when compared with typically developing children and adolescents. Age was negatively associated with all domains of HRQOL in children and adolescents with ADHD both by parent- and child-ratings, and the strongest effect was found in parental ratings of child's emotional HRQOL, with a moderate correlation. This meta-analysis suggests that HRQOL may be assessed in children and adolescents with ADHD both by parent proxy- and child self-reports, and that interventions may be planned accordingly. Future meta-analysis may explore how measures of HRQOL and other factors including child, parental, familiar and school characteristics influence the impact of ADHD and the parent-child agreement in children and adolescents.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2016 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2015.11.009