Association between children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and parental mental health: Data from the 2011–2020 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate whether children's attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with parental mental health, using data from the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES). Methods: This cross-sectional study included 14,428 samples from KNHANES of parents with children younger than 19 years between 2011 and 2020. Mental health problems, measured as perceived stress, depressive symptoms, and suicidality, were assessed. Sociodemographic and health-related characteristics were collected as potential confounding factors. The association between children with ADHD and parental mental health problems was expressed as odds ratio and 95 % confidence interval with multivariate logistic regression using PROC SURVEYLOGISTIC. Results: Among the 14,428 participants, 202 (1.4 %) were classified as parents of children with ADHD. Mothers of children with ADHD reported higher perceived stress (aOR = 1.67, 95 % CI 1.09–2.56), depressive symptoms (aOR = 2.93, 95 % CI 1.59–5.40), and suicidality (aOR = 2.63, 95 % CI 1.29–5.38) than those of children without ADHD after adjusting for parents' age, gender, and parental education level, employment status, cohabitation status, drinking, smoking, and number of children. However, fathers' mental health problems were not significantly associated with having a child with ADHD. Limitation: Because it was conducted the analysis using cross-sectional data, findings on causality are unclear. Conclusions: The current findings suggest that parenting children with ADHD is associated with parental mental health problems. Parents of children with ADHD, especially mothers, need community support and public health attention to help alleviate their mental health problems.