Common medication that is prescribed for children is Ritalin and Adderall, which is used to treat ADHD. It is very possible these drugs are over-prescribed, and it is obvious that these drugs are abused especially on college campuses. This is all important to consider because there are new risks being considered with these drugs.
There is recent concern about ineffective studies involving Ritalin (Fox News). The advantages of using Ritalin were not based on strong evidence or hard facts. The article mentions that “large well run trials still need to be done to assess the risks and the benefits.”
For this kind of trial, there would need to be large random studies done, it may help if the trial was blind or double blind because the participants could behave differently if they know they have the medication. A placebo may be helpful in this case to not have a bias based on receiving the drug. Having the trial be a double blind random control trial, could help the fact that the experimenters could have preconceived notions about what will happen to the person who takes the medication, and this could lead to a confirmation bias because they are trying to prove exactly what it is they expect.
The side effects concerning Ritalin are difficulty sleeping and loss of appetite. For college kids that are taking ADHD medication that don’t actually need them and already don’t sleep or eat enough, this could add to the problem.
It would be interesting to know what the mechanism is for why Ritalin leads to sleep problems because just from intuition you would think it would have the opposite effect. ADHD medication by design is meant to slow people down and make them less hyper, so I would expect that it would be easier to fall asleep if they are on the medication but apparently it has the opposite effect.
A separate study may need to be done to account for sleep difficulty and appetite separately. A control trial that just looks at all observations between the group of people that took the medication and the group with the placebo may not be in depth enough to account for everything.
It would be best to try different methods of random control trials to see what would be the most effective option for a quality trial.
“ADHD is one of the most commonly diagnosed childhood disorders” (Fox News). which makes it very important that the medication is safe and the right medication is given. The fact that the previous findings were based on studies that were not done well is pretty alarming.
Another issue with ADHD that gets talked about a lot is over diagnosis, it seems like a lot more children are being diagnosed with ADHD than in years past. If more children are determined to need the medication but the medication might not be all that effective and causes other issues, then people that potentially did not even need treated are experiencing side effects.
A common drug like Ritalin that is frequently prescribed for children should be safe with a high amount of confidence behind it, but this is not the case. The bottom line is medication that people take, especially children, should be safe and the studies on the drugs need to be done well all the time.
Sources:
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/11/25/research-raises-questions-over-adhd-drug-effects.html
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/110404/20151125/researchers-urge-caution-in-prescribing-adhd-drug-ritalin-may-not-treat-symptoms.htm
http://www.madinamerica.com/2015/11/the-adhd-drug-abuse-crisis-on-college-campuses/
Sleep is very important for a child’s development and anything that impacts a good sleep for children should be a concern. I hadn’t thought of the aspect of the medication increasing alertness, that would make sense for why it would be harder to fall asleep. I only really thought of the medication “slowing them down” when thinking about difficulty sleeping, which is why that did not click for me for why it would cause trouble sleeping. A lack of sleep and compounding the issues with ADHD would be a bigger problem, I would also be curious to know if children would be better off not taking medication. A random control trial should be done where some of the kids stop taking their medication and the others stay on it, then comparing their focus, cognitive abilities, and sleep habits. Having a child accurately report the quality of their sleep could be difficult though.
Thanks for your reply Madison! Yes, a big reason why I wrote about this topic is the abuse of it on college campuses. People that take Adderall or Ritalin to help them study probably do not realize or think about what negative effects there are of taking it. The other big aspect in this topic, over diagnosing children with ADHD is also interesting because kids really shouldn’t be expected to keep still and focus all the time. Not being able to keep still and having a lot of energy shouldn’t always be resulting in an ADHD diagnosis, and I feel like a lot of times it is. This article http://www.berkeleywellness.com/healthy-mind/mood/article/adhd-overdiagnosed from 2014 states that in the last year (2013) one in nine kids were diagnosed with ADHD, which was “a significant increase from the previous decade.” It would be helpful if they gave the actual numbers, but that finding goes along with my thought that ADHD is being diagnosed in children much more often.
Interesting post. I did a similar one in the first blog period. One thing that would be interesting to look deeper into is sleep. For children in particular, sleep is vital for their physical and mental development, and ADHD drugs are known to make it harder to fall asleep. An article from NPR (http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/11/24/457137288/common-adhd-medications-do-indeed-disturb-childrens-sleep) talks about this. It says that ADHD medicine can make it harder to fall asleep because it increases alertness, and a lack of sleep also makes the symptoms of ADHD worse. It would be interesting to see if the positive effects of the medicine outweighs the lack of sleep, or if children are better off with just getting a good night’s sleep.
This was a smarty topic to write about considering how Adderall is an issue within a college community. In a class over the summer I had to write a speech about overprescribing in the US and how big of an issue it has become. In my speech I wrote how Congress should implement a law stating that all states must have a system like the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) that monitors distribution of prescription drugs to people within a state, and allow an increase of programs like theNational Association of State Controlled Substances Authorities (NASCSA) to raise awareness. I thought it was good that you brought up about how children specifically are also being over diagnosed a lot lately. The website above could help for having something be passed to help with this issue! This was a good and informative blog!