Autistic people and people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often experience anxiety and depression. When these conditions occur together, though – as they often do – it can be hard to unpick which one is contributing the most to poor mental health. Our latest study aimed to find out.
We discovered that people with more ADHD personality traits were more likely to experience common mental health problems like depression and anxiety than people with more autistic traits. This is the first study, as far as we are aware, which shows that people with ADHD are more likely to have poor mental health than autistic people.
