Latent Longitudinal Profiles of ADHD and Depressive Symptoms Across Childhood and Adolescence

ADHD symptoms affect boys more frequently than girls and are associated with a variety of negative outcomes across development. Depressive symptoms are often comorbid with ADHD symptoms. Although depressive symptoms affect girls and boys equivalently in childhood, girls demonstrate an increase in depressive symptoms during adolescence compared to boys. Clarifying how ADHD and depressive symptoms influence each other across development and the degree to which these symptoms affect each other similarly for boys and girls is important. Such information has important implications for prevention and intervention programming seeking to ameliorate negative outcomes and improve self-regulation as different profiles of ADHD and depressive symptoms may benefit from focus on different sets of coping strategies. Thus, we identified separately for boys and girls longitudinal latent profiles of depressive and ADHD symptoms across childhood and adolescence.

Data came from an evaluation of elementary school-based prevention programs (N=677; 54% female, 86% African American, 65% received free/reduced lunch). A longitudinal latent profile model was estimated with teacher-reported ADHD symptoms using the Teacher Observation of Classroom Adaptation-Revised (Werthamer-Larsson et al., 1991) and with child self-reported depressive symptoms using the Baltimore How I Feel-Young Child, Self-Report (Ialongo et al., 1999). Symptoms were annually assess from grades 1 to 3 and grades 6 to 12. All measures demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties. Analyses used MPLUS 7.4 and controlled for race/ethnicity, receipt of free/reduced lunch, and intervention status.

Three profiles of ADHD and depressive symptoms provided the best balance of parsimony and fit for both boys and girls corresponding to Low Overall Symptoms, High ADHD Symptoms, and High Depression Symptoms. Youth in the High ADHD Symptoms profile had ADHD symptoms that increased across childhood for boys but stayed stable for girls; ADHD symptoms in this profile decreased across adolescence for both genders. Youth in the High Depression Symptoms profile had depressive symptoms that stayed stable in childhood for both genders, but in adolescence increased for girls and decreased for boys. In the High Depressive Symptoms profile, ADHD symptoms displayed moderate symptom severity compared to the other profiles in both developmental periods and for both genders.

Results indicated that moderate ADHD symptom severity in childhood may increase risk for depressive symptoms during adolescence. Programming that builds self-regulation skills may be helpful in preventing adolescent depressive symptoms. Future research directions include exploring how and why moderate childhood ADHD symptoms are associated with increased risk for depressive symptoms during adolescence.