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Australian doctors are over medicating children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), leading professionals say.
In a scathing article published in the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) on Monday, health experts have criticized the way Australian practitioners treat ADHD, a condition which affects children's learning and social skills.
The authors, Doctor Adrian Dunlop, from the University of Newcastle, and Professor Louise Newman, from the Centre for Women' s Mental Health at the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne, said many children with the condition were being unnecessarily "medicalized".
Dunlop and Newman said doctors were routinely prescribing ADHD drugs in a "simplistic attempt to find solutions to more complex problems underlying behavioural and emotional difficulties."
The authors also recommended doctors exercise caution when dishing out the medication to adult sufferers, due to the well-known misuse of other drugs in the community.
"The proportion of deliberate overdoses and associated suicidal behavior is of particular concern. Given concerns about the use of stimulant medication across the community in general, it is in some ways unsurprising that psychostimulants that may be appropriately prescribed can be misused," the report said.
Australia currently has no set medical guidelines for doctors to diagnose and treat ADHD, which affects around five percent of school-age children.
The researchers said Australia should follow the lead of countries like Canada and Britain, who have both enacted a rigorous screening process for those seeking medication for the condition.
"While careful assessment and universal precautions will not stop all non-medical use of prescription stimulants, including poisonings, they remain practical and feasible approaches to limit misuse," the authors said.
In Australia, kids as young as two can be given the behavior-modifying drug Ritalin, a stimulant which corrects the chemical imbalance in the central nervous system that causes ADHD.
A recent Australian study of 400 schoolchildren found that ADHD suffers were three times more likely to fall behind in language studies.
A second study of the same group discovered that 64 percent also had problems with anxiety.
