March 31, 2023 – The number of prescriptions written for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder medications rose during the pandemic, with notable increases among young adults, a study from the CDC shows.
“The current study adds to evidence that the increasing trend in the percentage of adults receiving prescriptions for stimulants has continued during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a notable upturn during 2020-2021,” the authors wrote. “The pandemic has had negative impacts on mental health, which might have led to or exacerbated ADHD symptoms.”
Access to telehealth may have added to the increase, the authors said.
Researchers studied insurance claims for stimulant prescriptions written between 2016 and 2021 for people 5 to 64 years old and determined what percentage of people in different age groups had those prescriptions filled. Prescriptions had been slowly going up since 2016 for most age groups but went up more quickly after the pandemic began.
Among the people studied, 4.1% of them got an ADHD prescription in 2020, compared to 3.8% in 2020 and 3.6% in 2016. The increases were most noticeable in certain age brackets.
From 2020 to 2021, the number of prescriptions went up more than 10% from for females 15 to 44 and males 25 to 44, the study said. The largest increase in the entire study was 19.2% for women ages 20 to 24, the study found.
ADHD is a brain disorder that affects how you pay attention, sit still, and control your behavior. It’s most commonly diagnosed in childhood but can continue into adulthood. Boys ages 5 to 19 still had the highest percentage of prescriptions filled, though the percentages actually decreased during the pandemic.
It’s estimated that ADHD affects more than 8 million adults, or up to 5% of Americans.
