Study: Rates of ADHD diagnosis and medication treatment continue to increase substantially

— Begin­ning in about 1990, sub­stan­tial increas­es in the rates of ADHD diag­no­sis and med­ical treat­ment were found in sev­er­al nation­al­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ples of US physi­cian office vis­its. For exam­ple, between 1995–96 and 2007-08, the num­ber of office vis­its at which an ADHD diag­no­sis was made increased by over 400% in adults — from 3.1…

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Study finds large gaps between research and practice in ADHD diagnosis and treatment

— Most chil­dren with ADHD receive their care from com­­mu­ni­­ty-based pedi­a­tri­cians. Giv­en the large num­ber of school-age chil­dren who require eval­u­a­tion and treat­ment ser­vices for ADHD, and the adverse impact that poor qual­i­ty care can have on chil­dren’s devel­op­ment, it is impor­tant for chil­dren to rou­tine­ly receive care in the com­mu­ni­ty that is con­sis­tent with…

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Sensible and perplexing changes in ADHD diagnostic criteria (DSM‑V)

The Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Asso­ci­a­tion recent­ly pub­lished DSM‑V, the first major revi­sion to the diag­nos­tic man­u­al for psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders since 1994. In DSM‑V, ADHD is includ­ed in the sec­tion on Neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal Dis­or­ders, rather than being grouped with the dis­rup­tive behav­ior dis­or­ders, i.e., Oppo­si­tion­al Defi­ant Dis­or­der and Con­duct Dis­or­der. This change bet­ter reflects the way ADHD is…

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Rethinking the Classification of Mental Illness

The new Diag­nos­tic and Sta­tis­ti­cal Man­u­al of Men­tal Dis­or­ders (DSM‑5) is sched­uled to be released in May 2013. This recent Dana Foun­da­tion arti­cle points out the need of a fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent approach based on the new ways researchers use to study and under­stand men­tal ill­ness. The prob­lem with the DSM-IV, our cur­rent shared diag­nos­tic language,…

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Shall we question the brand new book of human troubles

With three years still left until pub­li­ca­tion, the fights over the new ver­sion of the psy­chi­atric diag­nos­tic man­u­al, the DSM‑V, are hot­ting up and The New York Times has a con­cise arti­cle that cov­ers most of the main point of con­tention. — “What you have in the end,  Mr. Short­er said, “is this process of…

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