Pharma Industry and TV 'Screen Time' Blamed for Huge Spike in ADHD Diagnoses in the US

The number of American kids diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, known as ADHD, has spiked, and experts say there could be two reasons for the trend: Young people spending more time in front of electronic screens, and pharmaceutical companies pushing to sell more ADHD medications.

Twelve percent of American kids have now received the diagnoses of ADHD at some point in their lives, a number that skyrocketed 43 percent between 2003 and 2011, according to a study released this week in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

The data, which came from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics, was based on surveys in which parents of 190,000 randomly selected children were asked to report whether their children had ever received an ADHD diagnosis. Only 8 percent of kids had received the diagnosis in 2003, but by the 2011 study parents of 12 percent reported that their child had been diagnosed with the mental disorder.

Thomas Power, who directs the Center for Management of ADHD at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said that better diagnostics could play a role in the increased number of cases, but so could sociological factors and the relationship between technology and attention. Children who spend hours playing video games or watching television, he added, could develop habits that affect their ability to be attentive in a school setting.

"It's really high rates of screen time," Power said. "People have hypothesized that the attention that is needed to do well with computer games and activities may be different than the kind of attention needed to do well in school, and all this screen time may influence children to not be as attentive as they need to be in school."

Related: The First Penis Transplant in the United States Will Be Given to a Wounded Veteran

Economic factors, including increased pressure on parents to work longer hours or at multiple jobs, thereby reducing their ability to be involved with their children's lives, could also contribute to the increase in ADHD diagnoses.

Dr. Stephen Hinshaw, author of The ADHD Explosion: Myths, Medication, Money, and Today's Push for Performance, said that the uptick could be attributable to factors like the increased survival of low birthweight babies who are then more at risk for ADHD, and increased demands for academic performance among young children.

Experts noted that worries about the pharmaceutical industry's interest in seeing more children diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed corresponding drugs were also valid. The increase in diagnoses is similar to the increase in ADHD medication sales, which grew 8 percent each year between 2010 and 2014, according to data released earlier this year by IBISWorld and cited in Mother Jones. The ADHD pharmaceutical industry is projected to bring in more than $17 billion annually by 2020, according to the report.

Watch the VICE News documentary Last Chance High: 

"The pharmaceutical industry is a business that exists to make a profit and derives its profit from sales," Power said. "They spend a lot of money on marketing, so they're going to do what they can to increase the use of medication, that's how they operate."

He added that there have been many regulations put in place in recent years that require doctors to disclose any financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies.

"Are medications overprescribed or misprescribed? Absolutely," said Christina Di Bartolo, project coordinator for the Institute for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity and Behavior Disorders at the NYU Langone Medical Center's Child Study Center. "You have to be incredibly naïve about kids taking Adderall just to get better SAT scores. But I also work with families where the adults and the kid are doing everything they can and they're still having significant difficulty interfering with learning, and medication can really make a difference in the kids' lives."

Related: Harsh Drugs Laws, Rising HIV Rates, and Indonesia's Battle Over Both

For all children diagnosed with ADHD, the primary recommendation for treatment is behavioral therapy, Di Bartolo pointed out. Families can then decide whether to add a medication as a component of the treatment.

The significant increase in diagnoses reported in the study may be slightly inflated due to its methodology, in that parents might be less rigorous in deciding to report the diagnoses than clinicians would be. Power said that most studies coming out today put the prevalence figure at about 7 percent of the youth population.

Regardless, the number of ADHD cases in the United States is definitely increasing, and no one is exactly sure why.

The rise in diagnoses was especially sharp among girls, with a 55 percent increase, and Hispanic children of both genders, with an 83 percent increase in diagnoses, according to the study published this week.

"There's no doubt that more and more kids are being diagnosed with ADHD. But does that mean that there's an increase in the 'true prevalence' of ADHD (i.e., actual cases?). Or does it instead signal a rise in 'diagnosed prevalence' (i.e., more diagnoses, but actually misdiagnoses)?" Hinshaw wrote in an email to VICE News. "The short answer is that it could be both of the above."

There has been growing awareness of mental health issues in general in the US, according to Di Bartolo. Doctors and teachers have both been the target of education programs that seek to alert them to the signs and symptoms of a child with ADHD, which could increase diagnoses, and parents might today be more comfortable in admitting that their child has received such a diagnosis.

The increase in girls specifically is likely due to better diagnostics, Di Bartolo said, as girls may present symptoms like inability to pay attention — staring out a classroom window and daydreaming — that may be harder for a teacher to pick up on than a male classmate's inability to sit still.

"People are realizing that ADHD is not the same as other disorders and are realizing a child can be inattentive or unfocused without being hyperactive," she said. "Because this is more seen in girls, it's possible that inattentiveness suggests that maybe girls who are struggling with that are encouraged to get help at this time."

Follow Colleen Curry on Twitter: @currycolleen

Photo via Pixabay