OAKLAND, Calif., Dec. 26 (UPI) -- A child's diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is linked to his or her mother's use of health services, U.S. researchers said.
"The diagnoses and health care utilization that a mother receives prior to having her child is predictive of having a child who is diagnosed with ADHD," lead author G. Thomas Ray of Kaiser Permanente in Northern California said in a statement.
Using records from a Northern California Kaiser Permanente database, the researchers identified three groups -- mothers of children with ADHD, mothers of children without ADHD and mothers of children with asthma.
The study, published in the January issue of the journal Medical Care, found mothers of children with ADHD spent about $1,000 more on healthcare in the year before and in the two years following the birth of their child, compared to mothers who did not have children with ADHD, and they had more illnesses than mothers of children with asthma did.
"The mothers of children who are diagnosed with ADHD are more likely to be diagnosed with health conditions such as depression and anxiety disorder and use more health services in the year prior to, and the two years after, the birth of their child, than mothers of children without ADHD or the mothers of children with asthma," Ray said in a statement.
