Relative standards in ADHD diagnoses: The role of specialist behavior

Dalsgaard, Søren; Humlum, Maria Knoth; Nielsen, Helena Skyt; Simonsen, Marianne

doi:10.1016/j.econlet.2012.08.008

Cited by 42 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…In some countries, only mental health specialists are allowed to treat and diagnose mental disorders. Dalsgaard et al [68] found no relative age effect in a sample of 416,744 Danish children. Their conclusion was that the risk of diagnosing children of relative young age is lower if only specialists are allowed to diagnose ADHD, as is the case in Denmark.…”

Section: Implications For Daily Practice and Further Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Overdiagnosis of mental disorders in children and adolescents (in developed countries)

Merten

Cwik

Margraf

et al. 2017

Child Adolesc Psychiatry Ment Health

115

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During the past 50 years, health insurance providers and national registers of mental health regularly report significant increases in the number of mental disorder diagnoses in children and adolescents. However, epidemiological studies show mixed effects of time trends of prevalence of mental disorders. Overdiagnosis in clinical practice rather than an actual increase is assumed to be the cause for this situation. We conducted a systematic literature search on the topic of overdiagnosis of mental disorders in children and adolescents. Most reviewed studies suggest that misdiagnosis does occur; however, only one study was able to examine overdiagnosis in child and adolescent mental disorders from a methodological point-of-view. This study found significant evidence of overdiagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. In the second part of this paper, we summarize findings concerning diagnostician, informant and child/adolescent characteristics, as well as factors concerning diagnostic criteria and the health care system that can lead to mistakes in the routine diagnostic process resulting in misdiagnoses. These include the use of heuristics instead of data-based decisions by diagnosticians, misleading information by caregivers, ambiguity in symptom description relating to classification systems, as well as constraints in most health systems to assign a diagnosis in order to approve and reimburse treatment. To avoid misdiagnosis, standardized procedures as well as continued education of diagnosticians working with children and adolescents suffering from a mental disorder are needed.

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Section: Implications For Daily Practice and Further Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Overdiagnosis of mental disorders in children and adolescents (in developed countries)

Merten

Cwik

Margraf

et al. 2017

Child Adolesc Psychiatry Ment Health

115

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…[6][7][8] Halldner et al demonstrated an association of somewhat lower magnitude (odds ratio, 1.2-1.8) among children in Sweden, peaking at the age when they start school, at age 6 to 7 years. 9 In Denmark, 10,11 where prescribing of stimulants and medication for ADHD is still relatively conservative and school-entry age is flexible, there was a near absence of such a relative age effect. This suggests that such relative age effects are less likely to be artifacts in countries with more rigid school-entry cutoffs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stimulant use for ADHD and relative age in class among children in Israel

Hoshen

Benis

Keyes

et al. 2016

Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug

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Background Diagnosis of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is increasing. The present study sought to identify characteristics and medication treatment patterns of children with ADHD and compare them by relative age in class, sex, ethnicity, family size, sibling order, and other socioeconomic status, as well as find trends in disparity of pharmacotherapy. Methods This study was based on data from 1 013 149 Clalit Health Services members aged 6–17 years during 2006–2011. Centrally acting sympathomimetic drug purchases were compared according to children’s estimated relative age in class; youngest third (born August to November), middle third (born April to July), and oldest third (born December to March). Treatment trends were determined and compared according to sociodemographic and family-related factors. Results The overall prevalence of stimulant use in the population was 2.6% in 2006 and 4.9% in 2011. The annual incidence of stimulant use increased from 0.75% to 1.36%, rising more sharply among children in the older age groups (≥12) than among younger ones. Moreover, the youngest third of children in class was more likely to use medication than the oldest third (risk ratio (RR) 1.17, confidence interval (CI) 1.12–1.23) or the middle third (RR 1.06, CI 1.01–1.11). Of the different ethnic sectors, incidence of stimulant use was highest among general Jewish (1.8% in 2011) and lowest among Arabs (0.37% in 2011). Conclusions The use of stimulant medication is growing among children in Israel. Although the overall use does not exceed the estimated prevalence of ADHD among children, the appropriateness of prescribing to the Israeli pediatric population, especially to the youngest children in class, may be questionable.

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“…Lubotsky and Kaestner (2014) find some support for such complementarity as cognitive skills of pupils who are old-for-grade grow faster in kindergarten and first grade but the gap fades away after first grade. Black et al (2011) show that higher school starting age leads to improved mental health (for boys) and a lower risk of teenage pregnancies (for girls), while there is conflicting evidence regarding the risk of receiving ADHD diagnoses (Elder, 2010;Evans et al, 2010;Dalsgaard et al, 2012). A final channel is the individual's placement in the age hierarchy.…”

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confidence: 99%

School Starting Age and The Crime‐Age Profile

Landersø

Nielsen

Simonsen

2016

The Economic Journal

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes.You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. licence. www.econstor.eu If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S School Starting Age and the Crime-Age Profile ABSTRACTSchool Starting Age and the Crime-Age Profile * This paper uses register-based data to investigate the effects of school starting age on crime. Through this, we provide insights into the determinants of crime-age profiles. We exploit that Danish children typically start first grade in the calendar year they turn seven, which gives rise to a discontinuity in school starting age for children born around New Year. Our analysis speaks against a simple invariant crime-age profile as is popular in criminology: we find that higher school starting age lowers the propensity to commit crime at young ages. We also find effects on the number of crimes committed for boys. 2This paper investigates long-term effects of school starting age on crime while exploiting a discontinuity in school starting age for children born around New Year. Through this, we provide novel insights into the determinants of life-cycle criminal behaviour. The crime-age profile refers to an almost universally observed relationship between crime rates and age, where crime rates increase continuously until around age 18-20 and then decrease for the remainder of the life. We use the mechanical relationship between delayed school entry and delayed life-course to address whether the crime-age relationship is entirely caused by age through biological maturation (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990) or can be mediated by the timing of key life experiences (Sampson and Laub, 1995) and thus policy.A large literature is concerned with effects of school starting age and subsequent educational outcomes and has convincingly shown that starting school later leads to improved test scores (e.g. Bedard and Dhuey, 2006). Black et al. (2011) and Crawford et al. (2010) refine this type of analysisand show that this result is completely driven by an age-at-test effect: children who start school later are simply older ...

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Relative standards in ADHD diagnoses: The role of specialist behavior

Cited by 42 publications

References 7 publications

Overdiagnosis of mental disorders in children and adolescents (in developed countries)

Overdiagnosis of mental disorders in children and adolescents (in developed countries)

Stimulant use for ADHD and relative age in class among children in Israel

School Starting Age and The Crime‐Age Profile

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