Question: What is the relationship between pediatric depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)?
Answer: One of the things that we've come to learn about depression in children is that it often co-occurs with other disorders. It commonly occurs with anxiety disorders so that a child may be depressed and anxious.
In addition, many children who are depressed have problems like conduct disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. So they feel sad, but they also have problems with inattention, with concentration, maybe even with hyperactivity.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder may make a child depressed actually having that problem because parents and teachers and peers are always giving them a hard time for how they're acting. The two disorders are definitely different, but they may occur at the same time.
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