ADHD Medication: To Medicate or Not to Medicate?

Eleven percent of American children are diagnosed with at least one type of ADHD. That is 6.4 million children that are clinically diagnosed with the inability to focus attentively, restlessness, imbalanced mood swings and under-developed social skills. All of these lead to any learning environment being a daily battleground in the children both internally as well as externally. This is caused due to an under-activity in the frontal lobe of the child’s brain, which is responsible for their planning, motivation, social behavior and speech production. The symptoms associated with ADHD are currently being combated with the utilization of stimulants known as methylphenidates and amphetamines. This sector of the pharmaceutical industry costs a family seeking treatment around $2,000 annually, while society at large spends approximately 42.5 billion for the various treatment options available to the public coupled with those currently being researched. But an even larger concern remains, what are these stimulants truly doing to these children both short and long term?