Fewer antibiotics, more ADHD meds prescribed for kids

Our take: Over an eight year period, attempts to reduce the amount of antibiotics being prescribed to children has reduced, however, the number of antibiotics prescribed to adults has risen by 11 percent, and the amount of ADHD prescriptions for children has increased by nearly 50 percent.

The biggest contributor to bacteria drug resistance is the over-prescription of antibiotics, according to the CDC. Antibiotics are frequently prescribed for viruses, simply because healthcare providers think patients expect them. The common cold is the most common reason antibiotics are prescribed, despite the fact that antibiotics do not affect viruses.

"What the article is suggesting is that the number of children that we are treating for attention deficit disorder has gone up," Scott Benson, a spokesperson for the American Psychiatric Association, who was not involved in the study, told Reuters. "For the most part I think the overall increase reflects a reduction in the stigma. It used to be 'You're a bad parent if you can't get your child to behave, and you're a doubly bad parent if you put them on medicine."

Read more about Prescriptions and kids on iScienceTimes.com.