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Prescribing ADHD drugs for healthy kids? Just say no, group urges
By Melissa Healy

Prescribing psychotropic medications to normal, healthy kids who want to boost their academic performance is "not justifiable" because it contravenes a physician's responsibility to promote a child's "authentic" development and to protect him or her against coercion by parents or peers, a group of neurologists and bioethicists has asserted.

Those arguments are contained in a new finding published in the journal Neurology.

In recent years, the proportion of children diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed stimulant or other medication for the condition has risen steeply. So too has evidence of the medication's use by children and adolescents looking for an edge in test-taking.

Among 12th-graders, 3.4% acknowledged having used ADHD drugs in the last year for purposes other than those for which they are prescribed, according to a yearly federal survey of youth drug use. In the same 2008 survey, 2.9% of 10th-grade students and 1.6% of eighth-graders acknowledged having taken ADHD drugs for "nonmedical" purposes.

The neuro-ethicists wrote that widening use of ADHD medications and growing awareness and acceptance of the ADHD diagnosis have confronted physicians with increasing requests from parents and children to prescribe the medications. Some may come from parents of children who are developing normally but falling short of high expectations for grades and academic performance.

When asked for such medications by parents of children who do not need them, a physician should take the opportunity to explain that there is no evidence that such drugs benefit children who do not need them.

The neuro-ethicists stopped short of asserting that prescribing such medications to children for neuro-enhancement actually endangers their health. They noted that, though medications used for ADHD -- typically stimulants -- can raise blood pressure and heart rate, the consequences of such physiological changes in youngsters can be difficult to detect.


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