Are ADHD Medications Overprescribed?

Thursday, September 27th, 2012

Are ADHD medications overprescribed?

In a 2010 study in the Journal of Health Economics, researchers found that the youngest children among U.S. kindergartners (those born in August) were 40% more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and twice as likely to take ADHD medications as the oldest kindergartners studied (those born in September). Similar results were found in a study of children ages 6 to 12 published this year in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Simply put, this means that the people making the diagnoses aren’t distinguishing, in many cases, between normal developmental immaturity and ADHD. The author of the U.S. study estimates that this mistake could account for 20% of the current ADHD diagnoses in the U.S., or about 900,000 children, by his count.

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