Misdiagnosis Of Ritalin And ADHD

Even though many individuals in today’s society utilize Ritalin in a very effective manner, unfortunately, there are cases where it is taken incorrectly and abused. Ritalin is a methylphenidate and is mainly taken for those who have ADHD, which is short for Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In order to delve into what Ritalin is one must understand what ADHD and ADD are exactly. ADHD is a chronic condition that includes attention difficulty, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness. Children diagnosed with this condition often lose and forget things, they are unorganized, they have a difficulty staying seated, and they often interrupt others. According to a journal of Pediatric Pharmacology and Therapeutics, “ADHD is one of the most common neurobehavioral disorders in childhood. ADHD can impact not only school performance, but also social interaction. If untreated this could lead to delinquent behavior.” (Briars, 2016, p.2) ADD is similar in the sense that the individual has a hard time paying attention, but the main difference is that those with ADD are not hyperactive and ADD is technically a type of ADHD. In …show more content…
While there are no figures on exactly how many children have misdiagnosed it is enough to cause concern. One example that seemingly shows misdiagnosis is in the case of children who enter school right at the cut off age. These children are younger than many of their classmates and are therefore often times more immature. There should be no link in cutoff age children and higher ADHD rates, yet large jumps in ADHD rates among these children are found. Hannes Schwandt explains that these jumps occur at different months across states in accordance with the different cutoff dates, indicating that the jumps in prevalence rates represent misdiagnosed rather than actual differences in children 's health which are unlikely to be spuriously correlated with the different cutoff dates across states (Schwandt,