July 21, 2023 | Categories: Health, Health Care, Mental Health
An editorial recently published in the Journal of Attention Disorders highlights a significant spike in ADHD stimulant prescriptions from 2016 to 2021 — with an incredibly steep increase from 2020 to 2021. And, the data shows, that spike was especially pronounced among women.
The editorial’s authors suggest the increase in these prescription stimulants could be due to several factors. Factors include overall efforts to improve education about adult ADHD and expanding access to ADHD care. Other factors include overwhelmed patients seeking treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic and more neurodiversity awareness movements and ADHD information online. And a final factor is likely more companies working with mental health providers and prescribing stimulants online.
Over the past 25 years, things have changed in understanding ADHD, particularly with more research recognizing that populations other than young boys have it, Dr. Hinshaw says.
“Girls can and do have ADHD in childhood … and girls are more likely than boys to show the exclusively inattentive ‘form’ of this condition,” he says. “Yet it’s precisely such inattentive, distractible, and/or poorly self-regulated behavior patterns that are more likely to persist into adulthood.”
In the past decade, experts have increasingly understood that many adults have ADHD, even though this neurodevelopmental disorder may not have been recognized during childhood or adolescence. And recognition of ADHD in women has particularly increased because females have been so underdiagnosed historically.
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