NATURE: The smart-pill oversell

“Competition in today’s global economy is fuelling the dramatic increase in the use of ADHD medications, especially in the United States,” says Richard Scheffler, a health economist at UC Berkeley.

A study co-authored by Stephen Hinshaw, a psychologist at UC Berkeley, showed that gains in academic performance among students with ADHD who took medication for it were not enough to close the test-score gap between those with ADHD and those without. And the gains faded over time, Hinshaw said, even if they continued taking the drugs.

via “Medication: The Smart-Pill Oversell” in Nature, International weekly journal of science