Rates of parent-reported diagnoses of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) continued their upward trend through 2011, government researchers said.
Data from the 2011 edition of the National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) indicated that 11% (95% CI 1.5%-11.5%) of children 4 to 17 years of age had at one time or another received a diagnosis of ADHD, up from 9.5% in the 2007 NSCH results, according to Susanna N. Visser, MS, of the CDC in Atlanta, and colleagues.
The 2011 numbers were reported by parents of more than 76,000 American children responding to the survey.
The rate of current ADHD diagnoses was 8.8% (95% CI 8.4%-9.3), the researchers reported online in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. And, the prevalence of a current ADHD diagnosis plus use of ADHD medication was 6.1% (95% CI 5.7%-6.5%) in 2011.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pediatrics/ADHD-ADD/43104
But how much of this parent-reported ADHD is a child's normal response to toxic stress?
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