ADHD medication may increase risk of bullying

Is it teens’ access to drugs that eggs on bullies, or something else?

Linda Cottler, chair of the epidemiology department at the University of Florida, commented that it is probably the child’s behavior and not their medicine use that causes them to be bullied.

To assess the effect of stimulant medications on sleep, researchers analyzed nine studies published through March 2015, which included 246 children with ADHD randomly assigned to stimulants whose sleep was objectively measured.

But parents and kids may also need advice on setting up good sleep habits, Kidwell said. About 15% had been diagnosed with ADHD while almost 4% had been prescribed Ritalin or another stimulant within the past year.

“Having a diagnosis of ADHD has lifelong consequences”, said Epstein-Ngo. The researchers did stress the importance of addressing bullying in kids, especially in kids with a few kind of disorder.

“Is it a function of the fact that they are in riskier situations, or are they being coerced and forced to give up their medications?” She said, “They’re not being stigmatized because they have ADHD and use meds”.

Those pills are often bartered, sold or shared with peers who misuse the stimulants to gain a competitive edge in school, the study authors pointed out.

Finally, Epstein-Ngo notes, “There’s growing concern around stimulant misuse and abuse”.

“I think it’s fair to say that bullying is a potential risk that’s associated with stimulant treatment for ADHD”, explains study order Quyen Epstein-Ngo, who is a research assistant professor at the University of MI Institute for Research on Women and Gender. About 20% of the participants involved in the study with ADHD reported that their peers asked them to sell or share their medications with 50% of them said that they did the activity.

Kids who took drugs such as Ritalin, Adderall and other stimulants for their condition were twice as likely to be emotionally or physically bullied by their peers, while kids in middle and high school who shared or sold their medications were four times likelier to be victimized, the study said.

It’s unclear why kids with prescriptions for stimulant medications are more at risk for bullying and victimization. The problems dissipate, but never completely go away, the longer children continue to take the medication. Based on the data, the teens with ADHD who participated in trading, selling, or sharing their drugs were 4.5 times more likely to be bullied than children without ADHD, and five times more likely to be bullied than children with ADHD but with no recent prescription.

“It’s too early to assume that the bullying is related to the medication”, Moyal said. The studies did not rely on parental reports of their children’s sleeping patterns, instead requiring objective measures obtained through clinical sleep studies or wristband monitors used at home.