Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) is a mental diagnosis which can cause kids to be inattentive, over-active, and impulsive (what my wife would just deem as "childhood") and has seen a dramatic spike in the last 12 years, according to a new study. From 1996, the United States has seen a 30% increase in the number of kids that are taking medication for an ADHD diagnosis. That's roughly half a million more children taking Adderall and other ADHD-controlling medicines than in 1996. Who's taking the medications and what's contributing to the growth are what many parents and clinicians are asking as these results become published in Psych Central.

In 1996, only 2.4% kids under the age of 19 were receiving medication with their ADHD diagnosis. By 2008 that number had risen to 3.5%. However, the majority of the increase was not in children under 12, but in teenagers. The number of kids ages 13-18 that were prescribed medication for an ADHD diagnosis nearly doubled in that time frame. According to the study's co-author Dr. Benedetto Vitiello, "It likely reflects a recent realization that ADHD often persists as children age." The assumptions of the past decade tended to reflect a belief that kids would eventually outgrow the symptoms of ADHD as they aged. However, Vitiello says, kids "do not always grow out of their symptoms."

Additionally, ADHD diagnoses with medication among minority populations has also increased almost two-fold between 1996 and 2008. Vitiello attributes much of that increase to a growing awareness about ADHD and "a growing acceptance" among minority cultures and communities in the use of "psychopharmacological treatments."

As to whether children are being over-medicated and over-diagnosed for ADHD, many doctors seem to think so. Dr. Lawrence Diller of the Huffington Post, has called the ADHD diagnoses an "epidemic", appealing to the medical community and to parents to practice common sense medical advocacy, and to not look to drugs like Adderall and Ritalin as a "cure all" for misbehavior or unruly children. He also criticizes the medical system that, he says, is "too dependent on these treatments." Indeed, many clinicians now "specialize" in ADHD treatments and would be forced to downsize or re-specialize should ADHD become a more holistically or preventatively managed disorder. Then, of course, there are people that believe that ADHD is simply a childish personality and not an actual "disorder" at all, although nearly all brain research on the topic refutes this position.