Posted on 03/02/2008 7:56:16 PM PST by Coleus
CHILDREN who use Ritalin for a long period of time could be more at risk of delinquency and substance abuse, a study has found. Doctors are suggesting children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) should take a break from medication after three years of use.
An American study - published in the Medical Observer _ has found that while drugs such as Ritalin can initially help sufferers, the benefit of prolonged use is in doubt. Some children stay on medication until they reach 18, but researchers believe it may not protect them from all the symptoms.
Has your child been adversely affected by ADHD medication? Tell us your experience via feedback section below. The US Multimodal Treatment Study of Children revealed the more days of prescribed medication, the more serious delinquency became.
In a cohort of 500 children with ADHD - followed for 36 months until they were 12 - researchers found 27 per cent were at a greater risk of committing crime, compared with 7 per cent among "normative" children. Substance use also increased to 17 per cent in ADHD children - almost double the normal rate.
More than 30,000 children in Australia take Ritalin or a similar drug. Jill Sewell, Associate Professor of the Royal Australian College of Physicians, said evidence suggested a break from medication was beneficial.
"Evidence shows that there is very clear benefit of taking medication for 12-18 months, but after three years it is not so clear," she said. "Often in medications you do have to stop for a period of time to see if it is still effective."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
ritalin, video parenting, the perils of prosperity...pity a generation had to be wasted...
btt
Shocked.. NOT.
What were these DF’s thinking?
I do believe it does help some children, but that it is over used.
Also, with every medication there are side effects that you have to deal with.
Parents should way the risks of giving their children any medication.
I have a special needs daughter who I did not want to ever medicate. I would have tried lots of things to keep her off of medication.
Unfortunately, she had a grand mal seizure and also an abnormal EEG, so she has to go on medication. There have already been terrible side effects to one medication, and now she is on a new one.
With seizures, you don’t have much choice except to go on a very stringent diet that also has bad side effects.
With ADHD there are lots of things to try first (diet, change of teaching methods, and other things). I try the alternate methods first.
That should be weigh not way.
Any parent that lets their kid be put on Ritalin has several screws lose.
I'll probably get flamed for pinging the list, but the chances are if your child is not in public school, there'll be a lot less chance of them being put on Ritalin.
I know my son, who is a good kid but NEEDS to be active, would have been (mis)diagnosed as ADD/ADHA simply because of his need to burn it off. He would not have dealt well with the requirement of sitting still that long each day.
There's a good chance at least one of my daughters would have been, too. Some ignorant, albeit well intentioned, lady at church once approached me about her and how she displayed ADD/ADHD symptoms, just from the Wed. night program. I asked my daughter what she thought of the class, and her answer was that she was bored out of her mind.
Good point. Indeed, the methods used by public schools exaserbate ADD.
When my kids swam competatively, he was a pleasure to be around.
A week after swim team ended, I was ready to put him through the wall. I would make him go outside and play, just to burn it off. That kid needs to move in a big way.
He’s really excited about going to college because of all the sports opportunities that are available to try and do, right there on campus. No twenty minute drives to get there.
I’d never put a kid on Ritalin or similar meds. Nevertheless, correlation is not causation. It’s possible that the kids for whom Ritalin had been prescribed were simply more prone to bad behavior, and that’s why their parents and/or teachers were trying to drug them up in the first place.
Ritalin will destroy your childs life.
There are some here at FR that are still peddling that poison.
ADHD Drugs Won’t Raise Risk of Substance Abuse
By Sherry Baker, HealthDay Reporter
SATURDAY, March 1 (HealthDay News) — Parents of children who are prescribed psychostimulants for attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) might have one less thing to worry about now that a new study concludes these kids are no more likely than their peers to abuse drugs and alcohol as young adults.
The report, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health, is published in the March issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.
“The results should reassure clinicians who might be hesitant to treat ADHD because of concerns about future substance abuse,” said study co-author Michael C. Monuteaux, assistant director of research at the pediatric psychopharmacology program at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Past research looking for a link between ADHD medications and substance abuse has produced conflicting conclusions.
“Some previous studies showed an increased risk of substance abuse associated with stimulant treatment, and other studies showed both no association and also a protective effect from treatments,” Monuteaux said. “But those studies had some methodological limitations, and not all of them followed their samples well into late adolescence and early adulthood.”
The Massachusetts General Hospital investigators designed their study to overcome the shortcomings of previous studies. They followed their research subjects up to a median age of about 22, included an assessment for psychiatric problems such as conduct disorder that are associated with substance abuse, and applied rigorous methods to accurately analyze data.
The research study team interviewed 112 young men (ranging in age from 16 to 27) a decade after they had been diagnosed with ADHD about their use of alcohol, tobacco and a variety of psychoactive drugs. Seventy-three percent of the subjects had been treated with stimulants at some time, and 22 percent were currently taking the stimulant medications.
The study found no relationship between having ever received stimulant treatment and the risk of future alcohol or other substance abuse. The age at which stimulant treatment began and how long it continued also had no impact on substance use.
“This study is a continuing effort to explicate the factors that mediate risk. It is methodologically sound and suggests that, as always, things are more complicated than we want them to be. The study demonstrates that the use psychostimulants for ADHD children do not increase the risk for substance abuse in adulthood, but it also suggests there is no protective effect, said Dr. Jon A. Shaw, director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at the University of Miami.
Symptoms of ADHD include impulsiveness, hyperactivity and inattention. According to a study published last fall in the Archives of Pediatrics and amp; Adolescent Medicine, almost 9 percent of American children have ADHD, but only 32 percent of them are getting the medication they need.
“There is sufficient evidence that parents should be reassured that the use of psychostimulant medication for the treatment of ADHD in children and adolescents does not increase the risk for substance abuse in later life and remains the most effective treatment for this condition,” Shaw said.
More information
For more on ADHD, visit the National Institute for Mental Health.
This article is from last summer. See my article above that came out today.
Any person who would make a blanket statement about people they don't know has a few buttons missing.
That article is just another pied piper trap.
Keep all kids off of all non-natural medication. If it doesn’t come from life, it destroys life.
Gee, taking crap that alters the way a kids brain works, is a bad thing. Who’d a thunk it. I would love to smack the living crap out of 99% of the doctors who prescribe this crap.
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