CNN
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In some middle and high schools in the United States, 1 in 4 teens report that they have abused prescription stimulants for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in the past year, a new study found.
“This is the first national study to look at the non-medical use of prescription stimulants by middle and high school students, and we found a tremendously wide range of misuse,” said lead author Sean Esteban McCabe, director of the Center for the Study. of Drugs, Alcohol, Smoking and Health at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
“In some schools there was little or no stimulant misuse, while in other schools more than 25% of the students had used stimulants non-medically,” said McCabe, who is also a professor of nursing at the UC School of Nursing. University of Michigan. “This study is an important wake-up call.”
Non-medical uses of stimulants can include taking more than a normal dose to get high or taking the medication with alcohol or other drugs to push a halt, previous studies They have found.
Students also abuse medications or “use a pill someone gave them because of a sense of stress around academics; they’re trying to stay up late and study or finish papers,” said pediatrician Dr. Deepa Camenga, associate director of pediatric programs at the Yale Program in Addiction Medicine at New Haven, Connecticut.
“We know that this is happening in universities. An important takeaway from the new study is that the misuse and sharing of prescription stimulant drugs is happening in middle and high schools, not just in college,” said Camenga, who was not involved in the study.
Published Tuesday in the magazine JAMA Open Networkthe study analyzed data collected between 2005 and 2020 by Monitoring the Future, a federal survey that has measured drug and alcohol use among high school students nationwide every year since 1975.
In the data set used for this study, questionnaires were administered to more than 230,000 adolescents in grades eight, ten, and twelfth in a nationally representative sample of 3,284 high schools.
The schools with the highest rates of teens using prescription ADHD medication were about 36% more likely than students to have abused prescription stimulants in the past year, the study found. Schools with few or no students currently using such treatments had much less of a problem, but it didn’t go away, McCabe said.
“We know the two biggest sources are leftover medication, perhaps from family members, like siblings, and from peers who may be attending other schools,” he said.
According to the study, suburban schools in every region of the United States except the Northeast had higher rates of teen ADHD medication misuse, as did schools where one or more of parents had a college degree.
Schools with more white students and those with average levels of student binge drinking were also more likely to see stimulant abuse by teens.
On an individual level, students who said they had used marijuana in the last 30 days were four times more likely to abuse ADHD medications than teens who did not use weed, according to the analysis.
In addition, teens who said they used ADHD medication currently or in the past were 2.5% more likely to have misused stimulants compared with peers who had never used stimulants, the study found.
“But these findings were not driven solely by teens with ADHD abusing their medications,” McCabe said. “We still found a significant association, even when we excluded students who were never prescribed ADHD therapy.”
Data collection for the study was through 2020. Since then, new stats show that stimulant prescriptions increased by 10% during 2021 in most age groups. At the same time, there has been a nationwide shortage of Adderall, one of the most popular ADHD medications, leaving many patients unable to fill or refill your prescriptions.
The stakes are high: Taking stimulant medications inappropriately over time can lead to stimulant use disorder, which can lead to anxiety, depression, psychosis and seizures, experts say.
If used excessively or combined with alcohol or other drugs, there may be sudden health consequences. Side effects can include “paranoia, dangerously high body temperatures, and irregular heartbeats, especially if stimulants are taken in large doses or by means other than swallowing a pill,” according to the report. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Research has also shown that people who abuse ADHD medications are very likely to have multiple substance use disorders.
Stimulant drug abuse has grown in the past two decades, experts say, as more teens are diagnosed and prescribed those drugs: studies have 1 in 9 high school seniors report taking stimulant therapy for ADHD, McCabe said.
For children with ADHD who use their medications appropriately, stimulants can be an effective treatment. They are “protectors for a child’s health,” Camenga said. “Those adolescents who are diagnosed and treated correctly and monitored do very well: they have a lower risk of new mental health problems or new substance use disorders.”
The solution to the problem of stimulant misuse among middle and high school teens is not to limit the use of the drugs to kids who really need them, McCabe stressed.
“Instead, we need to take a hard look at school strategies that are more or less effective in curbing the misuse of stimulant medications,” he said. “Parents can ensure that the schools their children attend have secure medication storage and strict dispensing policies. And ask about the prevalence of misuse – that data is available for all schools.”
Families can also help by talking to their kids about how to handle peers who come up to them wanting a pill or two for a party or all-night study session, she added.
“You’d be surprised how many kids don’t know what to say,” McCabe said. “Parents can role-play with their kids to give them choices about what to say so they’re ready when it happens.”
parents and guardians You should always store controlled medications in a safe deposit box, and you shouldn’t be afraid to count pills and watch for early refills, he added.
“Ultimately, if parents suspect any type of misuse, they should contact their child’s doctor immediately,” McCabe said. “That child must be immediately examined and evaluated.”