You want to be aware of any potential long-term consequences ADHD medication may have on your child's developing body and brain before deciding whether to give it to them.

Because ADHD medications are typically stimulants and because children frequently take them for years, many parents are particularly worried about the side effects of these drugs. At the doses recommended for ADHD, stimulant drugs are not thought to be addictive, but being restricted substances, they have the potential to be abused.

Regarding stimulant drugs and ADHD, there is a lot of contradicting information in the media. The purpose of this article is to provide you with clear information so that you may weigh the advantages and disadvantages of taking an ADHD medication.

A precise diagnosis

Make sure your child has received a precise diagnosis from a specialist with training and expertise in child and adolescent mental health before you think about medication. If your child is provided medicine, make sure your doctor has enough time to observe your child over time and carefully determine the optimal dosage. Effective treatment and a careful diagnosis are essential for a successful outcome.

The fundamentals of stimulants

It's crucial to understand that the stimulant drugs used to treat ADHD are short-acting, meaning they don't remain in the body for very long. Upon waking up in the morning, your child will have essentially removed them from their system, regardless of how often they take them.

In other words, they cease to function the moment the youngster stops using them. The medication's potential adverse effects, such as appetite loss or difficulty sleeping, also cease when the patient stops taking it.

Studies on sustained efficacy

Numerous studies track ADHD children for extended periods of time, even into adulthood; however, the children in these studies are not receiving regular, scientifically controlled treatment, therefore the findings are inconclusive.

It is impossible to find out what kind of treatment they are receiving or how many of them actually take their medication as prescribed. Furthermore, some children outgrow their symptoms during adolescence. The results are biased because those who take medicine for the longest can also be the ones who first experienced the most severe symptoms of ADHD.

According to some experts, children in the MTA study's follow-up studies indicate that when a drug is taken for more than two years, its benefit diminishes and eventually vanishes. However, some argue that these results are useless since few children take their medicine regularly by the time they are adolescents and because medication use was not tracked or regulated after the first 14 months.

Studies on long-term security

Many longer-term studies that track ADHD children have not found any adverse effects in children whose parents indicate that their children are receiving medication.

In the late 1970s, more than 100 school-age children participated in a 2-year controlled study conducted by Rachel Klein, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine, and her colleagues. The participants were then routinely followed up with over a 33-year period. The majority, who are now 41 years old, showed no adverse impacts on their health or other functioning as compared to individuals who did not use ADHD medication.

Dr. Klein points out that because it is so difficult to treat patients in a method that is scientifically rigorous over an extended period of time and to measure the results, we are unsure of the potential long-term consequences of this medicine on the brain. However, she continues, parents must balance the unknowns of long-term use with the established hazards of not treating ADHD in kids, which include an increased likelihood of academic failure, arguments with parents and authorities, and risky behaviors.

Additionally, in what are known as "post-marketing surveys," doctors inform pharmaceutical corporations about any odd side effects or issues that their patients face, notes Ron Steingard, MD, associate medical director of the Child Mind Institute. He points out that nothing noteworthy regarding long-term impacts has emerged over the course of four decades.

Following their original FDA approval, all drugs are tracked using the same procedure. If a side effect is found, it results in label modifications or pharmaceutical recalls.

Does taking medicine for ADHD slow down growth?

There is proof that the physical development of a child may be impacted by the use of ADHD drugs, which have the ability to decrease appetite. youngsters who have been on medication for as little as three years are as much as one inch shorter and six pounds heavier than other youngsters, according to multiple studies conducted in the past ten years.

However, a few years ago, a research comparing children over a ten-year period revealed no differences in weight or height between the groups who had used stimulant drugs and the others. The first two years were when differences were most apparent, although most children taking ADHD medication eventually caught up to other children. Furthermore, there was no growth lag in children who had what parents refer to as a "drug holiday" throughout the summer or on the weekends.

Does taking medicine for ADHD lead to addiction issues?

In the dosages used to treat ADHD, stimulant drugs are not thought to be habit-forming, and there is no proof that using them results in substance misuse.

Nonetheless, parents of children with ADHD should be extremely concerned about substance usage. According to a recent study, although treating teens and young adults with ADHD with stimulant drugs does not lower their risk of substance dependence, it does put them at a higher risk than other children. The risk is associated with the disease rather than the treatment, as the latest study demonstrates.

Will my child's brain be affected in the long run by stimulant medication?

When a child takes stimulant medicine for ADHD, the drug alters the brain's dopamine levels, which are referred to as neurotransmitters. In comparison to other children, children who had received stimulant drug treatment had more "targets" for the dopamine that removes it from the neural route, according to studies that used brain scans to examine the children.

According to some scientists, the brain may have adjusted to the medication's elevated dopamine levels by increasing the density of those targets. This could make sense because some children require a higher dosage of the medication to have the same effects because it doesn't function as effectively for them over time. We don't know how long that rise might remain if medicine is stopped, or what impact it might have, if any.

Vice president of research at the Child Mind Institute Michael Milham, MD, PhD, continues, "In any case, lots of good medications become ineffective eventually." "Just because they function doesn't mean we don't use them."

Prolonged Impact of Adhd Drugs