Objective: Although previous reports have found no birth-order influence on ADHD risk, the authors hypothesize that being the firstborn is a risk factor for developing ADHD.
Method: They selected all of the currently treated ADHD outpatients (n = 748) from our database. Families with adopted sons, nonnuclear families, and families with only one child and with sons (affected or unaffected) younger than 6 or older than 18 years were excluded. A total of 181 families with 213 ADHD sons met the inclusion criteria. We used all siblings without a clinical diagnosis of ADHD and who had no contact with our service as our unaffected controls (n = 173).
Results: The bivariate analysis showed that ADHD was associated with birth order and that firstborn children had nearly twice the ADHD risk of children with other birth orders.
Conclusion: birth order can be an ADHD risk factor in clinical samples.
Keywords: Attention deficit disorder, ADHD; epidemiology; family risk factors; firstborn children.
© 2012 SAGE Publications.