Over 7,600 children poisoned by prescription Adderall in 2021- up 300% in last ... trends now
An explosion of prescriptions doled out for ADHD drugs has led to a 300 percent rise in children putting themselves at risk by taking too many.
Roughly one in 20 children nineteen years old and younger – 3.3 million people – have a prescription for a medication to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
Researchers pegged the drastic increase in reports to poison control – from about 1,900 in 2000 to 7,600 in 2021 – on the growing wave of new ADHD diagnoses and the subsequent outpouring of drugs to treat the condition.
About 54 percent of reports to poison centers occurred as a result of a child inadvertently taking more than one dose. However, about 13 percent of reports centered on children who either took the wrong medication or took someone else’s medication by accident.
There were no deaths due to these medication errors and the vast majority of kids did not need to go to the hospital, though slightly more than four percent had serious medical outcomes such as seizures, tremors, and changes in their mental health.
The graph shows the annual rate of medication errors, such as taking the wrong dose or mistakenly taking the wrong medication, over two decades. Young males drove the most drastic increases
Prescriptions for Adderall surged during the Covid-19 pandemic. In February 2020, just before the virus erupted across America, the drug made up 1.1 percent of drugs prescribed. By September 2022, the figure had more than doubled to 2.31 percent of all prescriptions written
About four percent of children who mistakenly took medications or took twice their normal dose had serious health effects while slightly over two percent had to go to the hospital
About two-thirds of children who took the wrong dose or medication were six to 12 years old and more than three-quarters were male.
However, kids younger than six were more likely to experience a bad outcome or be admitted to a hospital.
