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CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. ADHD
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1536207
This article is part of the Research Topic ADHD and Anxiety: Causality Sequences Through a Biopsychosocial Model View all 7 articles
ADHD, stress and anxiety
Provisionally accepted- Charles University, Prague, Czechia
Recent findings about stress and anxiety in ADHD suggest that specific processes related to brain developmental disorganization may create a vulnerable background that increases sensitivity to stress stimuli from psychosocial environment. These basic neurodevelopmental processes are closely related to developmental mechanisms of primitive functions and their integration or disintegration. In this context psychopathological processes that manifest in ADHD are linked to mechanisms of disturbed inhibitory functions that may cause incongruent neural interactions ("neural interference") of more primitive functions with higher levels of attentional and cognitive neural processes. These disturbed developmental processes also may determine increased sensitivity to stressful experiences that in cases of ADHD may lead to manifestations of various psychopathological symptoms such as disturbed attentional and motor functions, anxiety, depression and other cognitive and affective disturbances. These findings based on previous research suggest novel framework and hypothesis how this neurodevelopmentally based increased sensitivity to stress stimuli may manifest in ADHD etiopathogenesis in its relationship to cognitive, affective and motor deficits.
Keywords: ADHD, Anxiety, Depression, stress, Developmental disintegration, Primitive reflexes, Neural interference
Received: 28 Nov 2024; Accepted: 21 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bob and Privara. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Petr Bob, Charles University, Prague, Czechia
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