Assignment on The Paradox of ADHD

The JAMA analysis includes a long number of papers that show an increase in ADHD diagnoses, an increase in pharmaceutical treatment for ADHD, and conclusions indicating these new cases are on the “milder end of the ADHD continuum.”

According to a 2018 survey, 10.2 percent of children and adolescents aged 4 to 17 years had an ADHD diagnosis in 2016. The percentage was 6.1 percent in 1997, 20 years ago.

The steady rise over the years involves millions of young people, the vast majority of whom would take medicine. According to another study, the number of children with medication for ADHD grew by 28% between 2007 and 2011.

These figures suggest a broad and want to learn more about ADHD and pharmaceutical therapy. Nonetheless, both the diagnosis and the medications have long been a source of contention.

In a 2007 study, for example, researchers discovered that a large majority of respondents (86 percent) agreed that doctors overmedicate children with behavioral problems, two-thirds agreed that medications have long-term negative developmental effects and delay solving the child’s “real” problems, and slightly more than half agreed that medications blunt children’s personalities.

A previous (unpublished) focus group research I performed to investigate lay perceptions of childhood difficulties, ADHD, and medicines, as well as published studies of parents of ADHD-treated children. 6 Many research participants feel that ADHD is overdiagnosed, prefer behavioral therapies or therapy over medication, and are concerned about medication’s side effects.

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