Are anxiety disorders in children and adolescents less impairing than ADHD and autism spectrum disorders? Associations with child quality of life and parental stress and psychopathology

We compared clinically referred children with anxiety disorders (AD; n = 63) to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n = 39), ADHD Combined (ADHD-C; n = 62), ADHD Predominantly Inattentive (ADHD-I; n = 64), and typically developing children ( n = 42) on child quality of life (QOL), paternal and maternal psychopathology and parental stress. Diagnoses were based on DSM-IV-TR criteria. Multilevel analyses showed that QOL in AD was higher on school and social functioning, compared to respectively ADHD and ASD, and lower compared to normal controls on all five domains. Fathers reported their AD children higher QOL than mothers. Also, AD appeared to be associated with less parental stress and parental psychopathology than other child psychopathology. Therefore, parental factors may need to be considered more in treatment of children with ADHD/ASD than AD.