Temperament correlates in adult ADHD: A systematic review★★

Abstract

Background: Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most common neurodevelopmental disorder in children, but adult-ADHD is still an under-diagnosed and untreated condition. Treating adult-ADHD is complex and requires effective strategies for ADHD symptoms and comorbidities. Because of its high comorbidity rate with mood disorders and the growing interest in symptoms of emotional dysregulation in these patients, our aim was to collect studies that investigated temperament correlates in adult people with ADHD, to better understand the association between them and the eventual role of temperament as a prognostic-therapeutic marker.

Methods: We performed a systematic review of the literature. We included only studies that measured temperament traits in ADHD adults using the Temperament Evaluation of Memphis, Paris and San Diego-Auto-questionnaire (TEMPS-A) or the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI).

Results: We retrieved 15 papers that used the TCI and 6 papers that used the TEMPS-A. In the TCI studies, ADHD was associated with high scores on Novelty Seeking and Harm Avoidance and low scores on Persistence. For the TEMPS-A studies, ADHD and Bipolar Disorders share some similarities in temperament scores, except for the hyperthymic temperament score.

Limitations: A comparison between the TCI and TEMPS-A results was not possible. The number of papers included was small. Among them, the type of sample, the number of recruited subjects and the ADHD assessment were very different.

Conclusions: The majority of ADHD individuals share temperament traits such as lability, irritability and excessiveness of emotional responses. Further research is needed to better understand whether temperament influences the pharmacological response of ADHD patients and whether temperament scores affect the long-term therapeutic outcome.

Keywords: Adult; Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; Emotional dysregulation; TCI; TEMPS-A; Temperament.