Divorce Stress and Ritalin Use

Ritalin Use Doubles

Ritalin use doubles after divorce, a recent Canadian study finds.

Children from broken marriages are twice as likely to be prescribed attention-deficit drugs as children whose parents stay together, Alberta professor Lisa Strohscheina said on Monday.

Is this a big deal, well you decide.

Roughly 20 million American children live with only one parent
More than 6 percent of childern from divorced families were prescribed Ritalin
more than 1,200,000 childern in divorced families are on Ritalin.

In the general population childern take Ritalin approximately half as often.

600,000 more doctors prescribing
An additional $1100 per year per child
$660 million related to divorced childern on Ritalin

Seems like a lot to me.

Still don’t think it is an issue?

In 2002

2 million kid were diagnosised with ADHD
4 to 6 million were taking Ritalin.
Total drug cost? Roughly $5.5 billion

Really seems like a lot.

While I have not found more recent figures, there has been a rapid increase in the last 5 years as well.

Study Background.

More than 6 percent of childern from divorced families were prescribed Ritalin, compared with 3.3 percent of children whose parents stayed together

The study of more than 4,700 children started in 1994, while all the families were intact, Strohschein said. They followed the children’s progress to see what happened to their families and to see what drugs were prescribed.

"It shows clearly that divorce increases the likelihood that a child will be prescribed Ritalin," Strohschein said.

However there are many possible reasons for this, inappropriate issuance of prescriptions, increased incidence of ADHD due to increased stressor, a genetic component to ADHD, and others.

From ExpressNews Univ of Alberta

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