Sleep Disorders in Children with ADHD - Dissertation Example

The predictor variable, in this case, is if the subject was diagnosed with ADHD or not (there were controls used in this study).
The results showed that there was a significant difference between the sleeping patterns and habits of the controls and the individuals with ADHD in almost all areas except for stage 1% or SL, which showed no difference between the two groups. Additionally, as restless leg syndrome was of particular interest to the authors, it was interesting to see that there was a significant correlation between ADHD and RLS presence in the individuals studied. There was also a high prevalence of bruxism and SSRMD which both occur with each other and with periodic leg movement syndrome. There were also some correlations found between gender and the type of disorder seen in the patients.

One of the conclusions drawn from this was that ADHD itself is linked to abnormal polysomnography reports in many cases, which backs up previous findings. Previous literature had found that excessive daytime sleepiness is associated with ADHD patients, but this report concluded that this was not necessarily correlated, because there was no evidence of this from the results. The main conclusion drawn from these results is that there is a significant link between sleep disorders and ADHD and thus clinicians should use this information to detect problems and use the information in treatment. It is likely that these disorders coexist because they share many of the same pathogenetic (probably dopaminergic) pathways. Read More