The number of children being diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is on the rise, and has been for over two decades.
With this steep increase in ADHD cases, experts are turning to concerns about whether there could be a potential over-diagnosis string, according to CBS News.
According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are approximately one-third of the children in the U.S. diagnosed with some form of ADHD under the age of six. They added that about 9.5 percent of U.S. children between the ages of 3-17 have received a diagnosis of ADHD, which equals about 5.9 million kids.
In a recent study, researchers interviewed over 3,000 parents of children who had received a diagnosis of ADHD. After gathering the data, they first discovered that the average age of diagnosis was seven, but many of the cases had children diagnosed earlier as well.
“The increased rate is probably tied to kids getting diagnosed younger,” Dr. Michael F. Troy, Medical Director of Behavioral Health Services at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, said. “In general, there’s more awareness of the diagnosis, and once something’s accepted as a relatively common diagnosis, it becomes less stigmatized.”
He also said that children that are diagnosed at an earlier age might reflect a group with more severe symptoms and that sometimes, younger children’s symptoms tend to be noticed more outside of the home.
“The threshold to be dismissed from daycare or preschool is much lower than from elementary school or junior high or high school,” he said. “So if you’re a parent, and you have a child with highly disregulated behavior for any reason, it’s easier for somebody to say that they can’t come back to this daycare anymore. And now the parent has a problem that needs to be solved, whereas that wouldn’t happen as quickly for a school-aged kid.”
But the researchers also said that in some cases where children are diagnosed with ADHD, there could also be other factors at play contributing to the child’s behavior.
“ADHD is a description of behavior, of how someone presents, not of the etiology [the cause] of it,” Troy said. “You could have a severe cough and it could be because of a lot of different reasons. You could have disregulated behavior and have difficulty focusing and concentrating and it could be ADHD or it could be a combination of other conditions.”
These conditions include anxiety or possible emotional or learning problems and could be difficult to differentiate from ADHD.
“The behavior that’s observed at [age] 5 may not look terribly different across these different things, so the diagnosis of ADHD may be given but it doesn’t necessarily tell us why those behaviors are there.”
Experts across the board have raised the concern that incorrect diagnosis could lead to problems later in life. They encourage parents and physicians to be more vigilant in terms of monitoring their child’s behaviors and health.
