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Using Statistics New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI), a large database of linked de-identified administrative and survey data about people and households, a local study team examined a three-year birth cohort (mid-1992 through mid-1995) totaling 149,076 persons.
The team assessed the presence of ADHD within this cohort through diagnosis codes and inference from medication dispensing, where there was at least one code relating to an ADHD diagnosis in the medication datasets. This subgroup consisted of 3,975 persons.
Next, they related this information to criminal justice system interactions of increasing severity, starting with police proceedings, and continuing with court charges, court convictions, and incarcerations. These interactions were tracked during an eight-year period from participants’ 17th birthday through their 25th birthday.
In this same period the team also tracked types of offenses: against people; against property; against organizations, government, and community; and violent offenses.
In all cases, the study team adjusted for gender, ethnicity, deprivation, and area of residence as potential confounders.
With these adjustments, young adults with ADHD were over twice as likely as their typically developing peers to be proceeded against by police, to be charged with an offense, and to be convicted. They were almost five times as likely to be incarcerated.
With the same adjustments, young adults with ADHD were over twice as likely as their typically developing peers to be convicted of offenses against organizations, government, and community. They were almost three times as likely to be convicted of crimes against persons, and over three and a half times more likely to be convicted of either violent offenses or offenses against property.
The authors noted, “The greater effect size for incarceration observed in our study may be due to the lack of control for comorbid conditions such as CD [conduct disorder], which are known criminogenic risk factors.”
They also noted, “The sharp increase in the risk of incarceration observed may also signal differences in the NZ justice system’s approach to ADHD, which may be less responsive to the condition than other nations, particularly the steps in the justice system between conviction and sentence. This would suggest that the UNCRPD [United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities] obligations of equal recognition before the law and the elimination of discrimination on the basis of disability are not being met for individuals with ADHD in NZ.”
They concluded, “Our findings revealed that not only were individuals with ADHD overrepresented at all stages of the CJS [criminal justice system] and offense types examined, there was also a pattern of increasing risk for CJS interactions as these individuals moved through the system. These results highlight the importance of early identification and responsivity to ADHD within the CJS and suggest that the NZ justice system may require changes to both of these areas to ensure that young individuals with ADHD receive equitable access to, and treatment within, the CJS.”
Francesca Anns, Stephanie D’Souza, Conrad MacCormick, Brigit Mirfin-Veitch, Betony Clasby, Nathan Hughes, Warren Forster, Eden Tuisaula, and Nicholas Bowden, “Risk of Criminal Justice System Interactions in Young Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Findings From a National Birth Cohort,” Journal of Attention Disorders (2023), 1-11, https://doi.org/10.1177/10870547231177469.
Children with disabilities are known to be at heightened risk of violence compared to their non-disabled peers. To what extent does this hold true for ADHD?
Denmark has a single-payer health insurance system through which health data about virtually the entire population can be cross-referenced with population, crime, welfare, and other registers through unique individual person numbers.
A Danish study team accessed national registers to examine the relationship between ADHD and criminal victimhood among nine yearly birth cohorts totaling more than 570,000 children and adolescents.
Of these, 557,521, among them 12,040 with ADHD, were not reported as being exposed to violence, and 12,830, among which 1,179 with ADHD, were exposed to violence.
From the raw data, children and adolescents with ADHD were more than four times as likely to be exposed to violence than their typically developing peers.
The team then adjusted for other disabilities, family risk factors, gender, birth year, and ethnic background.
With these confounders out of the way, children and adolescents with ADHD remained more than twice as likely to be exposed to violence than their typically developing peers.
To place this outcome in further perspective:
Certain family risk factors further aggravated the odds:
Perhaps surprisingly, substance abuse by family members had no effect whatsoever after adjusting for confounders.
Child abuse includes any of the following inflicted on a minor under 18 years old: physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse, or neglect.
It is known to be associated with environmental factors such as poverty, parents or neighbors with a history of violence, and gender inequality.
Chronic mental disorders in minors are also associated with child abuse. To what extent, if any, might that be true of ADHD?
Taiwan has a single-payer national health insurance system that covers more than 99.6% of all residents, enabling nationwide population studies.
A local research team used data from almost two million Taiwanese in their country’s National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) spanning 15 years (2000-2015) to carry out a matched-cohort study.
All diagnoses of ADHD were made by board-certified specialists such as psychiatrists, pediatricians, neurologists, or physiatrists with a specialty in child and adolescent development.
3,540 children and adolescents between 6 and 18 years old with a diagnosis of ADHD were matched on a one-to-three basis with 10,620 peers from the NHIRD without an ADHD diagnosis.
The team adjusted for age, gender, location of residence (Northern, Central, Southern, and Eastern Taiwan), urbanization level of residence, level of hospitals as medical centers, and monthly insured premium. They further adjusted for comorbid conditions: intellectual disability, autistic disorder/pervasive developmental disorder, conduct disorder (CD)/oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), other developmental disorders, childhood emotional disorder, Tourette syndrome/tics disorders, and involuntary urination and defecation.
Overall, children and adolescents with an ADHD diagnosis were 1.8 times as likely to be abused as those without an ADHD diagnosis.
Unmedicated children and adolescents with an ADHD diagnosis were three times more likely to be abused. ADHD medication cut that risk in half.
That held true whether the medication used was methylphenidate or atomoxetine. Methylphenidate appeared to be slightly more effective than atomoxetine, and the combination of methylphenidate and atomoxetine slightly more effective yet, but these differences were not statistically significant.
The team concluded, “The results support that pharmacotherapy may attenuate the risk of child abuse in ADHD patients.”
Taiwan's National Health Insurance program is a single-payer system that covers 99.6% of the island's 23 million residents. It includes family relationships.
This enabled a Taiwanese study team to examine the comorbidity of psychiatric disorders among close relatives in the entire population over eleven years, beginning at the start of 2001 and concluding at the end of2011.
For greater certainty of diagnosis, only persons twice diagnosed with the same psychiatric disorder were included as index individuals. There were 431,887 index patients, 152,443 of whom were ADHD index patients.
These index patients were then compared with all of their first-degree relatives (FDRs): parents, children, siblings, and twins. This produced 1,017,430 patient-FDR pairs, of which 401,301 were ADHD patient-FDR pairs.
Next, four controls were matched by age, gender, and type relative to each case, resulting in 4,069,720 control pairs.
After adjusting for age, gender, urbanization, and income level, ADHD patients were seven times more likely than controls to have first-degree relatives with ADHD. They were also seven times more likely to have FDRs with major depressive disorder, four times more likely to have FDRs with autism spectrum disorder, twice as likely to have FDRs with bipolar disorder, and 80%more likely to have FDRs with schizophrenia.
Exercise has attracted growing attention as an intervention for ADHD. As a potential treatment option for ADHD, it is, of course, highly appealing because it can be low- to no-cost, widely accessible, and free of the side effects that can accompany medication. From previous studies, we know that certain types of exercise may be more effective than others, but do we actually know enough for clinicians to prescribe physical activity as a treatment for ADHD?
The First Study: Effects on Core ADHD Symptoms
Despite encouraging findings in individual studies, researchers have lacked clear guidance on which types of exercise work best, at what intensity, and for how long. A meta-analysis by Chen et al. set out to address this by pooling data from 20 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving 841 children and adolescents aged 4–18, all of which compared exercise interventions against non-exercising control groups.
The results were cautiously optimistic. Across standardized symptom scales, exercise produced a small improvement in ADHD symptoms overall. Objective cognitive tests showed a moderate improvement. Emotional and behavioral outcomes, however, showed no significant change.
To understand what was driving differences between studies, the researchers broke results down by exercise type. Therapeutic and alternative exercises (targeted movements and specific techniques such as those prescribed by physical therapists) were associated with moderate symptom improvements. Mind-body practices (such as yoga or tai chi) showed small-to-moderate gains. Conventional aerobic exercise yielded smaller effects, while skill-based competitive sports showed no measurable benefit. Notably, the variability between individual studies remained high throughout, meaning these categories should be interpreted with some caution.
Results:
The authors recommend that clinicians and parents consider incorporating therapeutic or alternative exercise sessions twice a week, each lasting 60–90 minutes, as a supplemental strategy alongside existing ADHD treatment. They stop short of calling this definitive, noting that future research should clarify how exercise produces its effects and how it might best be combined with medication or behavioral therapy.
The Second Study: Effects on Inhibitory Control
A second meta-analysis, by Zhang et al., zoomed in on a specific and particularly relevant cognitive challenge in ADHD: inhibitory control. Inhibitory control refers to the ability to suppress impulsive responses and tune out irrelevant distractions. This capacity underlies much of the restlessness, interrupting, and difficulty staying on task that characterize the condition.
This analysis drew on 34 studies with over 1,300 participants spanning all age groups, making it broader in scope than the Chen et al. review. Overall, exercise was associated with a moderate improvement in inhibitory control. When the analysis was restricted to RCTs alone, this finding held up. When studies with a high risk of bias were excluded, however, the effect size dropped to small-to-moderate.
One notable null result: three studies that used EEG to measure brain activity during inhibitory tasks found no significant effects on the neural signatures most closely tied to this process. This suggests exercise may influence behavior without necessarily changing the underlying brain mechanisms researchers expected, or that current methods aren't yet sensitive enough to detect such changes.
The dosing question produced some of the more practically useful findings. Single exercise sessions yielded only borderline small improvements. Sustained exercise programs, by contrast, showed moderate improvements, and programs with sessions three times per week produced large gains and had the strongest effect between the two meta-analyses. Exercise intensity and total program duration, perhaps interestingly, were not significant factors.
Results:
The authors are measured in their conclusions: exercise shows a real but modest benefit for inhibitory control, and frequency appears to matter more than intensity. They caution against overstating the case for exercise as treatment for ADHD overall, as it did not significantly affect hyperactivity or impulsivity as standalone outcomes, and its neural effects remain unclear.
The Broader Picture :
Ultimately, these two meta-analyses support exercise as a meaningful supplemental intervention for ADHD, particularly for attention and cognitive control, while urging realistic expectations. Neither suggests exercise should replace established treatments. Both are limited by high variability across the underlying studies, and both call for better-designed research to sharpen the guidance available to clinicians and families.
Boredom is more than just feeling restless or under-stimulated. It’s a negative emotional state that arises when activities feel meaningless or dull and, for those with ADHD, this negative emotional state might be markedly more intense. Researchers increasingly view boredom as functional: an internal signal pushing people to seek more rewarding and meaningful experiences. But for some, that signal becomes chronic and overwhelming.
People who are highly prone to boredom face a range of psychological and behavioral consequences, including anxiety, depression, difficulty identifying their own emotions (alexithymia), impulsivity, and physical complaints. These struggles often surface in harmful behaviors: overeating, substance use, compulsive internet use, and gambling.
For people with ADHD, boredom can cross into genuine distress. Many describe it as “torture” or “an itchy coat you can’t scratch”, language that conveys not mild discomfort but an urgent, almost unbearable need to escape. This makes sense given that ADHD involves core difficulties with attention, arousal regulation, and motivation, all of which make sustained engagement harder and boredom far more likely.
The Study:
A recent meta-analysis of 18 studies involving more than 22,000 participants confirmed a moderately strong and consistent positive association (an overall effect size of r = 0.40) between ADHD and self-reported boredom. All but one study found significant results, and there was no evidence of publication bias.
“While the relationship between ADHD and boredom may seem obvious,” the authors state, “this has paradoxically led to the phenomenon being understudied.”
Despite how significant this connection appears to be, the researchers noted it has attracted surprisingly little scientific attention; a gap they attribute to a widespread assumption that boredom in ADHD is simply a byproduct of inattention or impulsivity, and therefore not worth studying on its own terms. They push back on that view, arguing that boredom may be a more fundamental part of the ADHD experience: a bridge between atypical brain function and the behavioral, emotional, and cognitive difficulties that shape long-term outcomes.
The Take-Away:
Ultimately, addressing the profound boredom experienced by individuals with ADHD requires a multifaceted approach that goes beyond simply treating inattention. Researchers emphasize the need for rigorous studies to determine if stimulant medications actively reduce this intense boredom by repairing underlying brain mechanisms, rather than just as a side effect of improved focus. Beyond medication, tailored psychological therapies may offer promise; psychoeducation can help individuals reframe boredom as a biological signal rather than a personal failure or character flaw.
Additionally, another approach suggests that rather than solely focusing on treating the individual, systemic issues must be addressed, such as the effects of low-stimulation environments. For example, prioritizing a better "person-environment fit" through smaller class sizes, flexible academic pacing, and/or offering highly stimulating, novel tasks, schools and workplaces can offer meaningful relief from the chronic distress of ADHD-related boredom.
A new study from Japan suggests that infants born with craniosynostosis are significantly more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD later in childhood. Craniosynostosis is a condition in which the bony plates of the skull fuse prematurely, leading to increased intracranial pressure.
The Background:
Craniosynostosis affects roughly one in every 2,000 births. When the skull’s natural seams close prematurely, it can restrict brain growth and increase intracranial pressure, potentially reducing blood flow to the brain. Because the condition is relatively rare, it has been difficult to study at scale until now.
The Study:
To overcome this, researchers tapped into a large Japanese insurance database compiled by JMDC, Inc., which holds records on around 20 million people, or about 15% of Japan’s population. Drawing on two decades of data, the team tracked over 338,000 mother-child pairs. Children with related genetic syndromes or chromosomal conditions such as Down syndrome were excluded to keep the focus on craniosynostosis itself.
Of the children studied, around 1,145 had craniosynostosis, and 7,325 were diagnosed with ADHD. After accounting for factors like sex, birth year, maternal age, mental health history, pregnancy infections, and birth complications, children with craniosynostosis were found to have roughly 2.4 times the risk of a subsequent ADHD diagnosis compared to those without it.
To test whether shared family genetics or home environment might be driving the association rather than the skull condition itself, the researchers conducted a separate analysis among siblings. The elevated risk remained at 2.2 times. The consistency of the finding across both analyses strengthens the case for a genuine biological link.
The Results:
The results point to raised intracranial pressure and restricted cerebral blood flow as plausible mechanisms, though the study’s observational design means causation cannot be confirmed. Ultimately, these findings highlight the need for proactive, long-term care strategies for those born with craniosynostosis. By establishing a solid link between premature skull fusion and a significantly higher risk of ADHD, the research demonstrates that medical care for this condition should not end once the skull's physical structure is addressed.
The Takeaway:
Pediatricians, neurologists, and parents can use this data to implement early, routine behavioral and developmental screening for these children as they grow. This additional support would ensure that those who do develop ADHD can receive timely interventions, educational aids, and therapies, ultimately improving their long-term developmental outcomes.
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