ADHD Diagnoses in Children Increased More than 50 Percent in a Decade Maggie Severns - Mother Jones
go to original April 5, 2013

According to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, close to one in five high school age boys and 11 percent of all school-age children in the United States have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The findings were part of the Centers' study of children and health, in which the agency interviewed more than 76,000 parents across the country. (TheYoungTurks)

In 2011, eleven percent of school-age children had been diagnosed with ADHD That's a sixteen percent more than in 2007 and 53 percent more than a decade ago, according to a New York Times analysis of new data from the Center for Disease Control.

This comes out to a grand total 6.4 million children in the US, up to 4 million of whom have prescriptions for Adderall, Ritalin, or other medication, a class of drugs that brings in an estimated $9 billion in sales annually. The Times found that boys, particularly teenage boys ages 14-17, have the highest rates of diagnosis, though no one knows why.



Read the rest at Mother Jones

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