Getting High For Higher Scores

Attached a link to an article titled " Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill" reporting the abuse of ADHD drugs by high-school students to improve their grades. Its is troubling that the number of prescriptions for A.D.H.D. medications dispensed for young people ages 10 to 19 has risen 26 percent since 2007, to almost 21 million yearly, according to IMS Health, a health care information company — a number that experts estimate corresponds to more than two million individuals. But there is no reliable research on how many high school students take stimulants as a study aid. Doctors and teenagers from more than 15 schools across the nation with high academic standards estimated that the portion of students who do so ranges from 15 percent to 40 percent. I share the observation that physicians are being asked for prescriptions for Adderall solely for better grades. I recently " lost" a patient because I refused a mothers request to prescribe Adderall for her daughter to prepare for an " important exam." Despite the observation of increased ADHD prescription abuse a respected annual survey financed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, “Monitoring the Future,” reports that abuse of prescription amphetamines by 10th and 12th graders nationally has actually dipped from the 1990s and is remaining relatively steady at about 10 percent. However, some experts note that the survey does not focus on the demographic where they believe such abuse is rising steadily — students at high-pressure high schools — and also that many teenagers barely know that what they often call “study drugs” are in fact illegal amphetamines. Most of these drugs are now being snorted to achieve the desired effect. A number of teenagers interviewed laughed at the ease with which they got some doctors to write prescriptions for A.D.H.D. Many youngsters with prescriptions said their doctors merely listened to their stories and took out their prescription pads. The prescription abuse is increasing because users were becoming more common, they said, and some students who would rather not take the drugs would be compelled to join them because of the competition over class rank and colleges’ interest. Whats the solution? Physicians should abide by the treatment guidelines. The disorder’s definition requires inattentiveness, hyperactivity or impulse control to present “clinically significant impairment” in at least two settings (school and home, for example), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Crucially, some of this impairment must have been in evidence by age 7; a proper diagnosis for a teenager claiming to have A.D.H.D., several doctors said, requires interviewing parents, teachers and others to confirm that the problems existed long before. As physicians we have the ability to control this problem by carefully monitoring our own prescribing habits. I am interested in your response(s) Yours Bernd