“The ADHD Explosion: Clinical Realities and Policy Implications”

Book Talk, Hosted by The Center for Child and Youth Policy at UC Berkeley

Steve Hinshaw & Richard Scheffler
Monday, March 10 4:30 p.m.

All presentations will be at the Men’s Faculty Club, UC Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720 (map)
(510) 540-5678

Other events in this series:

“Using Predictive Risk Modeling in Health and Social Services: Case Studies from New Zealand”
Rhema Vaithianathan
Tuesday, February 25 4:30 p.m.

“Changes in Girls’ Pubertal Timing: Potential Contributors and Consequences”
Julianna Deardorff
Tuesday, April 8 4:00 p.m.

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UCLA Talk – Richard M. Scheffler

February 27th

School of Public Health

ADHD Explosion

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Teaching Self-Aware Minds:
Using Brain Science to Boost Social and Emotional Skills

February 13-15, 2014
At the Fairmont San Francisco Hotel in San Francisco, CA

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Richard Scheffler (2008 Awardee) was quoted in “The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder” which appeared in the New York Times, December 14, 2013.

 

via Richard Scheffler and Aaron Kesselheim quoted in the New York Times | Robert Wood Johnson Foundation – Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research.

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Authors of one of the most influential studies that first trumpeted the effectiveness of ADHD medications in the 1990s say they worry the results over-sold the benefits of using the drugs alone, without other forms of therapy.

Professor Stephen Hinshaw tells CNN that, “Subsequent publications where we looked more broadly at academics and social skills and family discipline styles, showed the clear and superior benefits of combining the medications with active family and school behavior therapy.” Hinshaw was a researcher in the influential 1990s study.

via Professor: Treatment of ADHD should focus on more than just drugs – The Lead with Jake Tapper – CNN.com Blogs

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Twenty years ago, more than a dozen leaders in child psychiatry received $11 million from the National Institute of Mental Health to study an important question facing families with children with ADHD: Is the best long-term treatment medication, behavioral therapy or both? Professor Stephen Hinshaw talks to NY Times about the study.

via A.D.H.D. Experts Re-evaluate Study’s Zeal for Drugs – NYTimes.com.

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After more than 50 years leading the fight to legitimize attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Keith Conners could be celebrating.

Severely hyperactive and impulsive children, once shunned as bad seeds, are now recognized as having a real neurological problem. Doctors and parents have largely accepted drugs like Adderall and Concerta to temper the traits of classic A.D.H.D., helping youngsters succeed in school and beyond.

But Dr. Conners did not feel triumphant this fall as he addressed a group of fellow A.D.H.D. specialists in Washington. He noted that recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the diagnosis had been made in 15 percent of high school-age children, and that the number of children on medication for the disorder had soared to 3.5 million from 600,000 in 1990. He questioned the rising rates of diagnosis and called them “a national disaster of dangerous proportions.”

via The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder – NYTimes.com

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Between the fall of 2011 and the spring of 2012, people across the United States suddenly found themselves unable to get their hands on A.D.H.D. medication. Low-dose generics were particularly in short supply. There were several factors contributing to the shortage, but the main cause was that supply was suddenly being outpaced by demand.

The number of diagnoses of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder has ballooned over the past few decades. Before the early 1990s, fewer than 5 percent of school-age kids were thought to have A.D.H.D. Earlier this year, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that 11 percent of children ages 4 to 17 had at some point received the diagnosis — and that doesn’t even include first-time diagnoses in adults. (Full disclosure: I’m one of them.)

That amounts to millions of extra people receiving regular doses of stimulant drugs to keep neurological symptoms in check. For a lot of us, the diagnosis and subsequent treatments — both behavioral and pharmaceutical — have proved helpful. But still: Where did we all come from? Were that many Americans always pathologically hyperactive and unable to focus, and only now are getting the treatment they need?

via The Not-So-Hidden Cause Behind the A.D.H.D. Epidemic – NYTimes.com.

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As a young mother, Robin Richeson was overwhelmed by her son Aaron’s boundless energy. Richeson chalked up his behavior, which included climbing tall trees, running away and an inability to focus in school to boys being boys.

But the teachers at Aaron’s school in Ownesboro, Ky., thought something else was going on. “They just said that he was all over the place — he couldn’t handle the structure. ‘We think he has ADD or ADHD,’” Richeson remembers being told at a parent-teacher meeting.

An evaluation by the family doctor confirmed those suspicions. Aaron has ADHD, a condition marked by inability to focus and impulsive behavior. Today, 7-year-old Aaron takes Ritalin, which helps him focus in school.

via Are standardized tests leading to more ADHD diagnoses? | Deseret News

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As the ranks of kids diagnosed with ADHD in this country continue to swell—to 12% of school-age children and as many as 20% of teenage boys, according to the CDC’s latest count—it becomes more and more urgent to look at what forces might be driving this phenomenon.

The new CDC survey, in addition to measuring the nationwide prevalence of ADHD diagnoses, and how many children are being medicated for the disorder, gives us a tantalizing opportunity to compare figures across states and regions. And that gives us an opportunity to investigate the dramatic discrepancies that appear when you do.

For instance, a child in Kentucky is three times as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD as a child in Nevada. And a child in Louisiana is five times as likely to take medication for ADHD as a child in Nevada. Most of the states with the highest rates of diagnosis and prescriptions for medication are in the South, with some in the Midwest; most of the states with the lowest rates are in the West or Northeast. What accounts for this regional disparity? Stephen Hinshaw, a clinical psychologist, has been asking that question for nearly a decade, along with his colleague at the University of California, Berkeley, Richard Scheffler, a health economist.

via Are Schools Driving ADHD Diagnoses? | Child Mind Institute.

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