New Study Shows Just How Early “Just Drug ‘Em” Operations Begin for Children Diagnosed with ADHD

     A recent Stanford study published in the JAMA Network Open shows that over forty percent of those 3-5 year olds diagnosed with ADHD are rushed onto medication within thirty days afetr diagnosis. The first medically recommended treatment after an ADHD diagnosis for that age group is non-medicated behavioral counseling, not drugs.

     Medication is only recommended if that behavioral therapy turns out to be ineffective for a child, yet in this study of 712,478 three to five year old children more than forty percent were prescribed medication within thirty days. That’s far too soon to assess the success of behavioral therapy, if any was even attempted.

     1.4 percent of those seven hundred thousand children had been diagnosed with ADHD based to a large degree on answers from early screening procedures in primary care practices. A full 68 percent of all of those young children diagnosed with ADHD were eventually put on medication before they turned seven years old.

     Two questions arise here. What prompts that many doctors to prescribe medication so quickly and to thereby go against their own profession’s recommendations for a non-pharmaceutical first line treatment? Second, is today’s screening process itself likely to lead to ADHD diagnoses because of what might be a limited attention span and a high activity levels of children that age is actually normal, and something they’ll grow out of, not signs of ADHD?

     There is certainly a greater convenience for a doctor to simply prescribe a pill than to take the time to figure out an appropriate behavior therapy program. Anyone who has tried to make an appointment for their toddler with a pediatrician knows how hard it sometimes is to get prompt medical attention. These doctors are busy, but sentencing a child so easily to the risks of the long term dangerous side effects of most ADHD medication is still
inexcusable.

     The second incentive for such snap judgments for prescriptions can be the payment policies of private insurance companies or of state reimbursement for behavioral, not pharmaceutical therapy. The Stanford study found significant disparities in the statistics for these preschool children prescribed drugs. There were high rates of ADHD diagnoses in publicly insured patients, but much lower rates for privately insured patients whose insurance plans might be more lenient in reimbursing for non-medicated behavioral therapy programs.

     The second question about the bias of the ADHD screening questions themselves is already being addressed by critics who point out that much of the behavior being questioned in them is actually fairly “normal” for children that age and not as alarming as these DSM diagnoses make out.

     This Stanford study discovered another danger in the screening procedures. They may be ethnically biased. White children were diagnosed with ADHD far more often than Hispanic, Asian, and Black children.

     The study calls for more investigation in all of these areas.

     That’s for sure. And quickly. Far too many children – particularly of toddler age – are facing a dangerous future from too many years on these dangerous ADHD drugs.