One Out Of Ten Kids Have ADHD
ADHD Increasing
- There are currently 5.4 million children who have been diagnosed with ADHD and 2.7 million of those are taking ADHD medication. That is almost one in ten school age children with an ADHD diagnosis, which is a 22 percent increase in four years.
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common childhood condition which is treatable with therapy, drugs or both.. ADHD can affect certain areas of the brain that allow problem solving, planning ahead, understanding others’ action, and impulse control.
“Based on our parent surveys, there has been an increase in parent-reported ADHD diagnosis among their children,” said lead author Susanna Visser of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“This increase was from 7.8 percent in 2003 to 9.5 percent in 2007,” she said. “When we project it to the American population, we can see that a million more children were diagnosed with ADHD in 2007 as compared to 2003. That’s a substantial increase in four years.”
“There are probably more children out there who have not received a diagnosis and we can’t determine how many more children there are based on these data,” Visser said.
