Abstract
Objectives. The first objective was to compare the incidence of possible diagnose and core symptoms of ADHD between the patient and the control group.
The second objective was to compare the incidence and describe the specific manifestation of ADHD core symptoms in individual diagnostic subgroups of eating disorders (ED). Sample and settings.
ADHD symptoms were assessed by self and other-report forms of a BAARS questionnaire. 133 ED female patients were diagnosed according to the ICD-10 criteria during admission. The control group consisted of 93 healthy female students.
Hypotheses. First, authors expected higher occurrence of ADHD in the group of patients compared to the healthy control group.
Second, authors expected that the individual diagnostic subeategones of ED will differ in the occurrence of core ADHD symptoms. And third, we assumed that the result obtained by the self report forms of the BAARS will correspond to the other-report forms.
Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS Statistic-22 and program R. Authors used chi-squared test for group comparison and multiple linear regression.
Results. Using self-report questionnaire of current symptoms 61 (46%) of ED patients were detected as likely having AMID compared to 22 (24%) from a healthy control group, 37 (28%) of ED patients were identified with the high probability of AMID diagnose compared to 12 (13%) from a healthy control group with significant differences.
Comparison of the results between individual diagnostic subcategories of ED points to significant differences between patients with AN and BN. These findings are taken into account in the individualization of the pharmacological and psychotherapeutic approach.
Study limitations. Due to a small sample size of atypical forms of anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN) authors had to limit the comparison to the AN and BN diagnostic subgroups.