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Summary: American parents were accused of using mental health drugs to enhance their healthy children, after official figures showed one in five secondary-school age boys had been diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder.
[2 April 2013] - Research by the Centers for Disease Control also found that more than one in ten school-age children in the US has now received an ADHD diagnosis, amid a sharp rise in reported instances of the condition. The findings raised fresh concerns that American children were being vastly over-medicated with potentially dangerous drugs. Some 6.4 million American children aged between 4 and 17 have received an ADHD diagnosis at some point in their lives, the US government scientists found. The number has risen by 16 per cent since 2007 and by 53 per cent in the past decade. Some two-thirds of all children currently diagnosed with the condition receive prescriptions for stimulants such as Ritalin and Adderall, which have been linked to addiction and psychosis. The new US figures suggest that American children are far more likely to be diagnosed with the condition than their British counterparts. About one per cent of British school-age children were found to have been diagnosed with hyperkinetic disorder, a similar but more narrowly-defined ilness. The figures shocked US child neurology experts, who have warned that more thorough research is needed into the sharp rise in cases of ADHD and into the potential side-effects of the medication. "Those are astronomical numbers. I'm floored," Dr William Graf, a professor at the Yale School of Medicine, told The New York Times, which received the government figures. Dr Graf said that it was now clear that American parents were encouraging the medication of their children merely to enhance their mental performance rather than to cure an illness. "Mild symptoms are being diagnosed so readily, which goes well beyond the disorder and beyond the zone of ambiguity to pure enhancement of children who are otherwise healthy," he said. James Swanson, a professor of psychiatry at Florida International University, added: "There's no way that one in five high-school boys has ADHD". Prof Swanson warned that prescribing such powerful medication to children would inevitably lead to "abuse and dependence". He also warned pupils would pass the drugs to their friends. A thriving black market for drugs such as Adderall, which is designed to focus the user's mind, is believed to exist in several American universities. Students given prescriptions by their doctors are known to sell tablets to classmates, some of whom depend on the medication to work through the night. FURTHER INFORMATION:
pdf: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9965527/Fears...