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Study: Ritalin Doesn't Help Academic Performance
The more acute a child's ADHD symptoms, the worse they scored for every outcome measured. But despite confirming that Ritalin use increased, especially among children with the worst ADHD, the authors found "little overall improvement in outcomes" in the short-term. After the policy change, children with high ADHD scores were even more likely to be behind in school, to have repeated a grade, and to have lower standardized math scores. The effect was stronger for boys than for girls -- boys were also more likely to eventually drop out of school. Children with average ADHD symptoms, particularly girls in this case, experienced a 24 percent increase in unhappiness once Ritalin became more commonly used.
How is it possible that an increase in ADHD treatment led to worse academic performance? The authors put forward the possibility that when made less disruptive, children ended up receiving less attention. The medication may have become "a substitute for other types of cognitive and behavioral interventions that might be necessary to help the child learn."