Hi group users,
I am always interested in disability incidence and prevalence figures. As you watch the figures increase, you can get an idea of how that would change the percentage of students with disabilities that could enter our adult education classes.
Maggie Fox from NBC news has reported on a new survey that found 7.5 percent of children aged 6–17 are taking some sort of prescription medicine for emotional or behavioral difficulties. The National Center for Health Statistics used data from interviews of the parents of 17,000 children in 2011-2012 for the study. It’s a first look at the problem, and supports evidence that more and more U.S. children are getting drugs for conditions like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
The good news is that more than half of their parents said the medication helped their children “a lot." The troubling news is that low-income kids were more likely to be given such drugs.
The survey did not ask parents which drugs, precisely, the children had been prescribed and it did not ask for which specific condition. More than 80 percent of the parents also said their children had at some point been diagnosed with ADHD.
More children insured by Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Programs used prescribed medication for emotional or behavioral difficulties than children with private health insurance or no health insurance.
And, unsurprisingly, more boys than girls were being medicated — 9.7 percent compared to 5.2 percent of girls.
According to the American Psychiatric Association, 5 percent of U.S. children have ADHD. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted that 11 percent and more of children have been diagnosed with ADHD, up from 7.8 percent in 2003. Other reports show diagnoses have jumped more than 24 percent in the last decade.
Rochelle Kenyon, SME