Over 7,600 children poisoned by prescription Adderall in 2021- up 300% in last two decades
Daily Mail An explosion of prescriptions doled out for ADHDdrugs has led to a 300 percent rise in children putting themselves at risk by taking too many.
Roughly one in 20 children nineteen years old and younger 3.3 million people have a prescription for a medication to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
Researchers pegged the drastic increase in reports to poison control from about 1,900 in 2000 to 7,600 in 2021 on the growing wave of new ADHD diagnoses and the subsequent outpouring of drugs to treat the condition.
About 54 percent of reports to poison centers occurred as a result of a child inadvertently taking more than one dose. However, about 13 percent of reports centered on children who either took the wrong medication or took someone elses medication by accident.
There were no deaths due to these medication errors and the vast majority of kids did not need to go to the hospital, though slightly more than four percent had serious medical outcomes such as seizures, tremors, and changes in their mental health.
