The role of socio-economic disadvantage in the development of comorbid emotional and conduct problems in children with ADHD.

Previous research shows that, compared to children without ADHD, children with ADHD have worse socio-emotional outcomes and more experience of socio-economic disadvantage. In this study, we explored if and how the increased emotional and behavioural difficulties faced by children with ADHD may be accounted for by their more disadvantaged socio-economic circumstances. Our study, using data from 180 children (149 boys) with ADHD from the Millennium Cohort Study, had two aims. First, to examine the role of socio-economic disadvantage in the trajectories of emotional and conduct problems in children with ADHD at ages 3, 5, 7 and 11 years. Second, to explore the roles of the home environment (household chaos) and parenting (quality of emotional support, quality of the parent-child relationship and harsh parental discipline) in mediating any associations between socio-economic disadvantage and child emotional and conduct problems. Using growth curve models, we found that socio-economic disadvantage was associated with emotional and conduct problems but neither the home environment nor parenting attenuated this association. Lower quality of the parent-child relationship and harsher discipline were associated with more conduct problems. It appears that socio-economic disadvantage and parenting contribute independently to the prediction of comorbid psychopathology in children with ADHD.