In a new study, researchers found that preschoolers are not receiving appropriate guideline-directed care for ADHD.
Clinical practice guidelines for this age group recommend beginning with family/behavioral therapy. Drugs are recommended by the guidelines only after therapy has failed to improve the situation or in very severe cases. But the researchers found that 42.2% of these 3- to 5-year-olds were given stimulant drugs before therapy could even be attempted.
“Clinical practice guidelines recommend medications as second-line treatment in cases with substantial dysfunction or lack of response to behavioral treatment,” the researchers write. Yet, they add, “more than one-third of patients lacked sufficient time for an evidence-based behavioral treatment before starting medications.”
The study was led by Yair Bannett at Stanford University and published in JAMA Network Open.
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Peter Simons was an academic researcher in psychology. Now, as a science writer, he tries to provide the layperson with a view into the sometimes inscrutable world of psychiatric research. As an editor for blogs and personal stories at Mad in America, he prizes the accounts of those with lived experience of the psychiatric system and shares alternatives to the biomedical model.