Co-morbidity of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder among children with seizure disorders at University of Gondar referral hospital Ethiopia (2016)

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a disorder in which a person is unable to control behavior due to difficulty in processing neural stimuli, accompanied by an extremely high level of motor activity. The prevalence is much higher ranging from 8 to 77% among children with seizure disorders than in the general population. When attention deficit hyperactivity disorder presents in children with seizure disorder, it makes the treatment complicated and the prognosis poor. Hence, understanding the magnitude of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and associated factors would be important to have a policy intention towards these people and to design appropriate interventions. Therefore, the current study was conducted to determine the comorbidity of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and associated factors in children with seizure disorders. A hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted by taking 260 children who have follow ups in the pediatric seizure clinic. The systematic random sampling technique was used to recruit participants. A structured, pretested and interviewer-administered questionnaire which included questions on associated factors and standard disruptive behavioral disorder rating scale was used to collect data. Data were coded, entered and cleaned by using the Epi-Data version 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 20 for further analysis. The multivariate binary logistic regression was used to check the association between independent and dependent variables. Variables with significant associations were identified based on adjusted odds ratio, with a 95% CI and p-value of < 0.05 will be considered as statistically significant. The prevalence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder among epileptic children was found to be 115 (44.2%),with a confidence interval of (38.1-50.5),out of which only 3 (2.6%) were detected as having mental health problems by the clinician. The predominant subtype was inattentive type 96 (61.1%). Factors significantly associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder were male sex (AOR = 2.70 CI 1.46-4.97), family history of seizure disorder (AOR = 2.42 CI 1.26-4.65), family history of mental illnesses (AOR = 4.14 CI 1.76-9.68), sudden onset of the seizure (AOR = 2.37 CI 1.32-4.27), and uncontrolled seizure (AOR = 2.55 CI 1.41-4.61). Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder was common among children with seizure disorders in the study area. Male sex, sudden onsets of seizure, family history of seizure, and that of other psychiatric disorders as well as uncontrolled seizures were factors that increased the odds of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Therefore, interventions that would address such factors would help to overcome further complications.