Temporal trends and geographical variability of the prevalence and incidence of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder diagnoses among children in Catalonia, Spain

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common behavioral disorders in childhood. According to a recent systematic review, the worldwide estimate of ADHD prevalence is 7.2% in children. This study aims to assess the prevalence of ADHD diagnoses in 2017 and the incidence of ADHD diagnoses in 2009–2017 in children living in Catalonia, Spain, as well as their temporal and geographical variability, and stratifying by sex and age. We used administrative data for all children aged 4 to 17 years who were insured in the public Catalan Health System in 2009–2017. We identified all ADHD cases diagnosed in 2009–2017 (ICD-9 code 314). We estimated the prevalence of ADHD diagnoses in 2017 and the overall annual incidence of ADHD diagnoses in 2009–2017. We used Poisson regression models to assess temporal trends in the incidence. We estimated a prevalence of ADHD diagnoses of 4.06% (95%CI 4.03, 4.10) in 2017, being 5.81% (95%CI 5.75, 5.87) for boys and 2.20% (95%CI 2.16, 2.24) for girls, the highest prevalence being in 13-to-17-year-olds (7.28% (95%CI 7.20, 7.36)). We did not observe a statistically significant increase of the incidence of ADHD diagnoses during the study period. Geographical differences were found across the healthcare areas in both prevalence and annual incidence and constant during the study period. In conclusion, the prevalence of ADHD diagnoses observed in this study was 4.06%, which was lower than the estimates reported in previous systematic reviews, but in line with the prevalence estimates from other recent European studies. The prevalence was higher in boys than girls, with a sex ratio consistent with previous studies. We did not observe an increase in the temporal trend of incidence of ADHD diagnoses in recent years, but we found geographical differences.