November 4, 2005 -- Survey Reports ADHD, LD Prevalence in 2003

Parents reported to the National Health Interview Study that in the year 2003, approximately 16 percent of boys ages 5 to 17 years and 8 percent of girls of those ages had been diagnosed at some point with either attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or a learning disability (LD) or a combination of both. The survey found that 5.4 percent of boys and 1.6 percent of girls had been diagnosed as having ADHD only, while 5.3 percent of boys and 3.8 percent of girls were diagnosed as having a learning disability only. Another group of children˜4.0 percent of boys and 2.4 percent of girls˜had both ADHD and LD. The National Health Interview Study is available at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhis.htm.