Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018 Aug 16;8(1):11169.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-29488-2.

The Prevalence of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder among Chinese Children and Adolescents

Anni Liu  1 , Yunwen Xu  2 , Qiong Yan  1 , Lian Tong  3
Affiliations

The Prevalence of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder among Chinese Children and Adolescents

Anni Liu et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Updating the worldwide prevalence estimates of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has significant applications for the further study of ADHD. However, previous reviews included few samples of Chinese children and adolescents. To conduct a systematic review of ADHD prevalence in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan to determine the possible causes of the varied estimates in Chinese samples and to offer a reference for computing the worldwide pooled prevalence. We searched for PubMed, Embase, PsycINFO, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, VIP, WANFANG DATA, and China Science Periodical Database databases with time and language restrictions. A total of 67 studies covering 642,266 Chinese children and adolescents were included. The prevalence estimates of ADHD in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan were 6.5%, 6.4%, and 4.2%, respectively, with a pooled estimate of 6.3%. Multivariate meta-regression analyses indicated that the year of data collection, age, and family socioeconomic status of the participants were significantly associated with the prevalence estimates. Our findings suggest that geographic location plays a limited role in the large variability of ADHD prevalence estimates. Instead, the variability may be explained primarily by the years of data collection, and children's socioeconomic backgrounds, and methodological characteristics of studies.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Study selection flowchart.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Forest plot of subgroup prevalence estimates among children and adolescents in three regions. aData was not available in some studies.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Begg’s and Egger’s funnel plots for analysis of publication bias.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Thapar A, Cooper M. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Lancet. 2016;387:1240–1250. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(15)00238-X. - DOI - PubMed
    1. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental diseases (DSM-IV), 4th ed. (American Psychiatric Publishing, 1994).
    1. World Health Organization (WHO). The ICD-10 classification of mental and behavioral disorders: diagnosticcriteria for research. (WHO, 1993)
    1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a public health research agenda, https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/research.html (2017).
    1. Dulcan M. Practice parameters for the assessment and treatment of children, adolescents, and adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 1997;36:85s–121s. doi: 10.1097/00004583-199710001-00007. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types