Girls with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and their families often expect their obvious symptoms, such as irritability or disruptive behavior, to lessen as they grow into adulthood. Yet a foreign study found that as adults, girls with a history of ADHD are more likely to self-harm and even attempt suicide after experiencing setbacks and relationship failures. Like boys with ADHD, girls continue to have problems with academic achievement and relationships as adults and require special medical care, according to the study’s lead author, who called the study the largest-ever study of girls with a childhood diagnosis of ADHD that lasted more than 10 years. The findings are consistent with those of a previous study by a team from the University of California, Berkeley. That is, girls with ADHD showed fewer overt symptoms as they got older, but there were still many hidden problems. hinshaw said the findings challenge the assumption that autism can go away when girls grow up and emphasize the need for long-term monitoring and treatment of the disorder. The longitudinal study began when the girls were 6-12 years old and was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. Since 1997, Hinshaw and his team have tracked ethnically diverse socioeconomically diverse girls with ADHD in the San Francisco Bay Area through children’s summer camps and followed them through adolescence and adulthood. Ten years later, 140 were examined, ages 17-24, to compare their behavioral, emotional development and intellectual development to a matched group of 88 controls. The researchers also measured the main symptoms of 2 subtypes of ADHD: an attention deficit only group and a group of patients with inattention combined with hyperactivity and impulsivity. The study’s main finding was that the inattentive combined with hyperactive and impulsive group in childhood was most likely to self-harm and make suicide attempts in early adulthood. In fact, Hinshaw said, the study noted that more than half of the members of the group reported having already engaged in self-harming behavior and more than one-fifth had attempted suicide. A key question is, why are young adult women with ADHD at a significantly higher risk of self-harm? Impulse control problems may be a central factor, the study said.