Adults

A study with adults by Jacob and colleagues (2018) [108] reported a relationship between ADHD symptoms and possible ED, especially uncontrolled eating symptoms largely explained by anxiety disorder (40% for possible ED, 33% for uncontrolled eating) and stressful life events (28% for possible ED, 24% for uncontrolled eating). Another study found that the odds ratio of ADHD-ED association was considerably attenuated after adjusting for comorbid psychiatric disorders (such as mood and anxiety disorders), especially for BN (before adjusting for psychiatric disorders: OR: 28.24, 95% CI: 6.33–126.01; after adjusting for psychiatric disorders: OR: 5.04, 95% CI: 1.15–22.08) [109].

Similarly, Kaisari and colleagues (2018) [138] found that ADHD inattentive and hyperactivity/impulsivity symptoms were both directly and indirectly associated with binge eating through negative affectivity (anxiety, depression and perceived stress). Moreover, after controlling for depressive and anxiety symptoms, there was no longer a correlation between ADHD symptoms and BMI (inattention: r = −0.031; *p* = 0.350 and hyperactivity/impulsivity: r = −0.05; *p* = 0.307 respectively) [9].

Christian and colleagues (2020) [135] found that negative urgency and emotion self-regulation difficulties were associated with both bulimic and ADHD symptoms, highlighting a possible shared pathway to both ADHD and ED symptoms. Further investigations revealed an impact of negative urgency and emotion self-regulation difficulties in the association between ADHD and ED, especially bulimic symptoms. These results support the hypothesis that negative urgency and emotion dysregulation mediate the association between ADHD and disordered eating.

Williamson and colleagues (2017) [139] investigated the role of emotion self-regulation and ADHD symptoms in the weight loss of obesity patients after bariatric surgery. The interaction between ADHD symptomatology and emotion self-regulation accounted for 13% of the weight loss variance. The results also indicated an inverse association between ADHD symptoms and weight loss 12 months post-surgery among patients with low scores on emotion self-regulation (36.7% of the sample).
