Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Wildland firefighters and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

Informally Refereed

Abstract

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common disorders of childhood, affecting 3 to 7 percent of the population (American Psychiatric Association 2000). Research has indicated that the prevalence rate of ADHD in adult populations is approximately 4.4 percent and that the majority of those cases go untreated (Kessler et al. 2006). To date, no known research has investigated the rate of ADHD in wildland firefighters, or the implications it may have for this population. For this study, 302 wildland firefighters representing a diverse array of firefighting resource types took the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS v1.1). Almost one in five respondents (19.5 percent) had scores that suggested the presence of ADHD and associated symptoms. Additional studies are needed to investigate ADHD within the wildland firefighting community.

Parent Publication

Citation

Palmer, Charles G.; Gaskill, Steven; Domitrovich, Joe; McNamara, Marcy; Knutson, Brian; Spear, Alysha. 2011. Wildland firefighters and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In: McCaffrey, Sarah M.; Fisher, Cherie LeBlanc, eds. 2011. Proceedings of the second conference on the human dimensions of wildland fire. Gen. Tech. Rep. NRS-P-84. Newtown Square, PA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station: 9-13.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/38511