Psychological distress in children with developmental coordination disorder and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Motor-coordination problems plus ADHD spell double trouble for anxiety and depression, so dual screening is essential.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Missiuna et al. (2014) asked parents and kids to fill out mood checklists.
They compared three groups: children with only developmental coordination disorder, children with both DCD and ADHD, and typically developing peers.
The study used a school sample, not a clinic sample, so the kids were already in regular classrooms.
What they found
Children with DCD alone felt more anxious and sad than their peers.
The group with both DCD and ADHD scored highest on parent-rated depression.
Kids’ own ratings and parents’ ratings both told the same story: more distress when movement and attention problems combine.
How this fits with other research
Matson et al. (2011) already showed that DCD on its own raises anxiety. Missiuna et al. (2014) extends that work by adding ADHD to the picture and finding the mood risk is even larger.
Anthony et al. (2020) looked at DCD plus overweight and saw lower social self-worth. Together these studies build a chain: first DCD, then add another factor—ADHD or weight—and emotional pain increases each time.
Guttmann-Steinmetz et al. (2010) found anxiety rises in boys with ADHD even without DCD. The new data say when DCD is also present, depression joins the mix, not just anxiety.
Why it matters
If you screen for motor delays, also run a quick mood and ADHD checklist. Early catches let you add coping skills, social stories, or referral to counseling before sadness deepens.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study explored whether or not a population-based sample of children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD), with and without comorbid attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), experienced higher levels of psychological distress than their peers. A two-stage procedure was used to identify 244 children: 68 with DCD only, 54 with ADHD only, 31 with comorbid DCD and ADHD, and 91 randomly selected typically developing (TD) children. Symptoms of depression and anxiety were measured by child and parent report. Child sex and caregiver ethnicity differed across groups, with a higher ratio of boys to girls in the ADHD only group and a slightly higher proportion of non-Caucasian caregivers in the TD group. After controlling for age, sex, and caregiver ethnicity, there was significant variation across groups in both anxiety (by parent report, F(3,235)=8.9, p<0.001; by child report, F(3,236)=5.6, p=0.001) and depression (parent report, F(3,236)=23.7, p<0.001; child report, F(3,238)=9.9, p<0.001). In general, children in all three disorder groups had significantly higher levels of symptoms than TD children, but most pairwise differences among those three groups were not significant. The one exception was the higher level of depressive symptoms noted by parent report in the ADHD/DCD group. In conclusion, children identified on the basis of motor coordination problems through a population-based screen showed significantly more symptoms of depression and anxiety than typically developing children. Children who have both DCD and ADHD are particularly at heightened risk of psychological distress.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2014 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2014.01.007