Wednesday, September 08, 2010

ADHD associated with welfare benefits

A recently published Swedish study has found;

Coming from a family on welfare benefits increased the risk of ADHD medication by 135 per cent when compared with households not claiming benefits.

As usual there are inter-related factors - low maternal education, single parenthood and low income.

"Our study showed that almost half of the cases could be explained by the socioeconomic factors included in our analysis, clearly demonstrating that these are potent predictors of ADHD-medication in Swedish schoolchildren" says Professor Hjern.

"There are several ways that family factors may influence ADHD. For example, low parental education is associated with general social disadvantage, a higher number of stress factors and a greater risk of childhood adversity.



A NZ Herald report from 2003 adds another dimension to this link:

Parents of children prescribed methylphenidate for ADHD were selling it to supplement their benefit, while there was anecdotal evidence children had been selling it at school, Dr Morgan said.

The National Addiction Centre director and psychiatrist, Associate Professor Doug Sellman, said the more methylphenidate was used for ADHD, the more families would trade it.

"The temptation to sell Johnny's medication is stronger in poorer families, and ADHD tends to be found more in lower socioeconomic families," he said.


So I guess there may be a question about whether the condition and diagnosis is more prevalent amongst beneficiary adults and children, or the desire for the medication. Probably a combination of both.

7 comments:

TimM said...

For those in the know it is certainly an easy way to supplement the benefit.
The question is whether ritalin is over prescribed, and I think it likely is.

Anonymous said...

I wonder, too, whether adults who have ADHD (or other conditions) achieved less at school, find it harder to hold down a job and therefore are more likely to end up on a benefit.

I say this as the parent of a 10 year old with learning difficulties - I am working hard with her school to ensure that she is supported so that she achieves as well as she can, and therefore has a job earning as much as she can. (While still expecting that she can choose her job and that hopefully it will be something she enjoys.)

I want to make clear that I do not think having a learning difficulty is an excuse to avoid working, but rather is a reason for that person to try even harder.

Anonymous said...

This is very sad. I knew of a boy who was diagnosed as ADHD at the age of 13. I felt sorry for him at the time because his mother (solo) blamed him for everything and she was more concerned with palming him off to people. I had spoken with him a few times and thought he was a neat kid. He must have been under a lot of stress. They diagonised him with ADHD when he smashed up the walls of an indoor swimming pool and locked everyone out of the pool. Poor kid.

Gloria

Anonymous said...

Nice idea but completely wrong really. Sure some poorer families have hit on ritalin as a street drug to make money. But there are far more prescriptions for Ritalin written in Karori and Remuera than Cannons Creek and Otahuhu

ADHD is almost exclusively a diagnosis of the well-heeled in New Zealand

Anonymous said...

ADHD is vastly underdiagnosed in the NZ poor and overdiagnosed in the wealthy children. David Werry would tell you our prisons are full of men with ADHD who have never so much as heard of a child psychologist, let alone ever met one.

Anonymous said...

I meant John Werry the child psychiatrist....

mojo said...

Indeed it would appear to be an issue for the relatively affluent here ... but like psychiatric diagnoses were, they will become more evenly dispersed over time,even across age, for better or worse. The literature is somewhat less than equivocal on the subject. I am unsure what the paradoxical effects are with methylphenidate ... a stimulant that 'slows functioning,' that also at times has no positive effect and can speed up functioning.
Since coming on to the market it has always been subject to abuse, ingested by parents and sold - the 'poor man's P.'
One must be wary of experts ... the corrections department have had a burgeoning psychological service for quite some years now, so most inmates would heve been 'touched' by such.