From Deseret News archives:
Is attention-deficit disorder being undertreated?
About 9 percent of children in the study, ages 8 to 15, met the criteria for ADHD. That's equivalent to about 2.4 million U.S. children, the authors wrote in a study published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine. Of these, only about a third received medication consistently in the previous year.
Estimates of the prevalence of ADHD have varied widely, from 2 percent of the U.S. population to 26 percent, the study authors wrote. ADHD is the most commonly diagnosed behavioral disorder of childhood, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health based in Bethesda, Maryland. This study took a nationally representative sample of 3,000 children across the United States.
"There's a perception that ADHD is overdiagnosed and overtreated, so we wanted to see if that was true among those who met the disease criteria," said lead author Tanya Froehlich, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician and researcher at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital in Ohio. "We really wanted to take the best and most accurate look at how common ADHD is."
The study wasn't funded by any companies that make ADHD drugs. It was supported by a National Institutes of Health grant.
Treatments for ADHD, a behavioral disorder that make it hard for people to listen to instructions, sit still and pay attention to detail, include Shire Plc's Adderall, Eli Lilly & Co.'s Strattera, Novartis AG's Ritalin and Focalin, and Ovation Pharmaceuticals Inc's Desoxyn.
The researchers didn't evaluate nonprescription treatments such as structured classroom management, parent education or behavioral therapy for the child, Froehlich said.
"There's a real paucity of mental health and behavior services, so it's hard to believe that these kids are receiving appropriate behavior interventions" instead of drugs, Froehlich said.
The medicines work best when accompanied by behavioral therapy, she said.
About 3 percent of those who didn't meet the ADHD criteria were medicated for the disorder, she said. This could be because of misdiagnosis or because the children had improved and no longer needed the medicine, Froehlich said.
"That's a murky group," she said.
Poor children were more than twice as likely as their healthy peers to have the disorder, according to the study. Only 16 percent of the poorest children who had met the criteria for diagnosing the illness had received medication for the disease, and they were two-thirds less likely to receive medicine consistently.
