Whoa! Half of Kids Diagnosed With ADHD Are Six or Younger and Most Are On Meds
The headline is true. So says a report from a study led by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. How did this happen!? When did the age of kids diagnosed with ADHD shift sharply to little boys and girls barely out of nursery school? Well, according to the research, it happened over the last several years. It’s shocking and scary. Somehow I thought the public, and hopefully the resistant medical profession, were becoming more aware of environmental causes for ADHD symptoms and the proven role of diet in behavior. Guess not.
Two million more kids diagnosed
The recent study showed that during an eight year period, two million more children in the United States were diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and half are six or younger. Worse: Children with “severe ADHD” are usually diagnosed by age four!
More than two-thirds diagnosed are taking medication
Over two-thirds of those with an ADHD diagnosis were taking medication for treatment in 2011. Seems the doctors were pretty convincing, or the parents were very desperate. Otherwise, who would casually give medications like Ritalin to their young child? This is a crisis for our society. See the study here, which covered data from roughly 2004 to 2012. A good New York Times article is here. It has this quote: “Dr. Lawrence H. Diller, a behavioral pediatrician in Walnut Creek, Calif., said in a telephone interview: “People prescribing to 2-year-olds are just winging it. It is outside the standard of care, and they should be subject to malpractice if something goes wrong with a kid.” The only problem with that quote: Is who is going to decide something is going wrong, and when? I suggest all doctors prescribing stimulants to young children should be subject to a review for possible malpractice.
