Anxiety and ADHD can have similar symptoms:
Children and teens who have trouble paying attention are often believed to be experiencing ADHD, which can lead to anxiety diagnoses being overlooked.
Only a licensed mental health professional can make an accurate diagnosis. But there are ways that you, as a parent or caregiver, can get an idea of whether your child’s behavior likely stems from anxiety or ADHD.
Trouble paying attention or focusing on tasks can seem like obvious hallmarks of ADHD — but they can also stem from anxiety. When kids are distracted by constant worry, concentrating in school gets way more difficult. Anxiety is often missed because it can present with similar behaviors to ADHD like:
Many children with ADHD also have anxiety. Sometimes this is because kids feel anxious as a result of their ADHD symptoms — they can’t attend to things in class so they’re always missing information and getting into trouble, which they feel nervous or worried about.
As a parent or caregiver, you cannot make a definite diagnosis. But there are behaviors you can spot that would help you understand whether your child is facing anxiety or ADHD. Besides trouble paying attention, two other kinds of behavior are associated with ADHD: hyperactivity and impulsivity.
The majority of children with ADHD have some combination of inattentive, hyperactive and impulsive behaviors.
A definitive diagnosis of ADHD or anxiety can only be made by a licensed mental health professional. Before getting a diagnoses observe your child’s behavior so that you can provide the best information possible to your child’s care provider.
You can find effective treatment options for both anxiety and ADHD. Your doctor and therapist should work carefully with you to introduce one intervention at a time and develop a strategy that will be both safe and effective.
Anxiety is often best treated through CBT, or cognitive behavior therapy, which helps kids learn how challenge unrealistic thoughts and tolerate the things that make them anxious.
ADHD is primarily treated with a combination of parent training and the use of stimulant medication to help the child focus. Some children who get effective treatment for ADHD also experience a reduction in anxiety.
In other situations, children who have both an anxiety disorder and ADHD find the child’s anxiety doesn’t “go away” when the ADHD symptoms get better. In these cases, a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy and medications may be the most effective treatment.
