Just as the United State is beginning to collectively withdrawal from two decades of opioid abuse, medical experts are raising alarms about what could be the next big drug: medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports there have been more than 19,000 reported complications from the use of drugs intended for ADHD.
Recommended For You
The number of recreational Adderall users has also risen dramatically in recent years, from roughly 350,000 in 2006 to 1.4 million in 2014.
In 2015, 87 million prescriptions for ADHD meds were written. Or, as the Journal Sentinel points out, there is now enough Ritalin produced annually to provide every American a month's supply of the stimulant.
Related: Doctors face opioid dilemma
Similar to how they began doling out large opioid prescriptions to treat a wide range of pain, doctors have over the past two decades become nonchalant about diagnosing adults with ADHD and prescribing them powerful medication to treat it.
The abuse or misuse of such drugs by those who may suffer from ADHD is a problem, but so too is the abuse of the drug by those who seek them out for purely recreational purposes. In between recreational users and those who use it medically is a group that may use the drugs occasionally to get through a late night shift or pull an all-nighter cramming for an exam.
The diagnosis of ADHD has long been controversial. Although there is medical consensus that certain children and adults are helped by medication such as Ritalin or Adderall, there is controversy over how people are being diagnosed.
Some question whether doctors are succumbing to the pressure of irritated parents who want an easy solution to an unruly child, while others have argued that poor performance in school, particularly among children who are the youngest in their grade, is often misinterpreted as evidence of ADHD. A study of children in Taiwan found that those born in August (often the youngest) were nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed as ADHD as those born in September (usually the oldest).
And of course, some believe that the uptick in prescriptions is largely because of aggressive marketing by drug companies.
"I believe that ADHD is a real condition, but it's on a spectrum, just the way that high blood pressure and autism are," explained Dr. Stephen Hinshaw, a psychologist at Berkeley who co-authored "The ADHD Explosion: Myths, Medication, Money, and Today's Push for Performance," in an interview with the American Psychological Association. "It's always a bit arbitrary as to who is actually above the cut and who is below because we don't know exactly where the cut is."
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
