I'm Dr Russell Barclay and I'm a clinical professor of Psychiatry at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical School here in Richmond Virginia

speak with you about the comorbidity or overlap of ADHD with autism spectrum disorder

both disorders are
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highly genetic here we see about two-thirds to three-quarters of all cases of ADHD being inherited or genetically influenced and the balance are usually the result of pregnancy and to some extent birth complications with a very small percentage developing after birth in ASD the genetic contribution is as great or even greater

treatment we use for both disorders can
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be seen here where you see that each disorder often involves a treatment package of five things

educating families about the nature of the disorder which leads to understanding them as neurodevelopmental which hopefully leads to reframing the child's disorder as biological and that should lead to compassion and greater forgiveness of the child's difficulties and acceptance of them as a neurodevelopmentally disabled individual following that there will be the need for behavior modification often delivered far far more intensively to
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ASD children through applied Behavior Analysis which we do not use with ADHD children where behavior modification is principally the training of parents in behavior management methods that are much milder involve contingency management and are done by the parents and not necessarily by an Ava therapist and the same is done in school to help with behavior management there both disorders are going to require accommodations in various contexts so that the individual is less impaired but the nature of those accommodations is going to involve
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dealing with the executive deficits that ADHD produces which as I've pointed out can be quite different than the accommodations one would provide to a child or teen with ASD

most children with ADHD are going to be treated with medication up to 80 percent at some time in childhood or adolescence there are no medications that directly treat the symptoms of ASD where medication is used it is being used for a comorbid disorder such as ADHD or anxiety disorders or to some extent

even aggression where we might find that the
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atypical antipsychotics might be used or some of the antihypertensive drugs such as the Alpha 2 agonists like guanfacine

studies in Israel and others beginning here that the CBD component of the marijuana molecule might be useful in helping with some aspects of ASD such as with anxiety and emotion regulation but that is not necessarily going to be specific to ASD as it's quite likely it would achieve similar gains in ADHD

nature of these psychosocial treatments used for ADHD are often milder involved contingency managements used by parents and teachers may involve incorporating routine
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physical exercise working on improving sleep if that's a problem in ADHD and and doing some cognitive behavior therapy targeting executive function deficits by late adolescents into adulthood

to conclude ADHD is a primary disorder of executive functioning and self-regulation ASD is not it's a primary disorder of social communication social interaction and often coupled with restrictive and repetitive interests where there are executive function deficits they are secondary to these primary problems and not the primary problem in their own right

these disorders can
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certainly coexist with each other

some of the overlap of ASD with ADHD might be driven by the discovery of the new attention disorder SCT or what I have called concentration deficit disorder