ADHD drugs can give kids nightmarish hallucinations
Well, they’ve found another side effect to ADHD treatments: “rare” cases of hallucinations. And of course, since children are by far the largest segment of the population being treated for so-called attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, it’s kids that are suffering from these side effects.
This latest FDA study was prompted by the fact that there’d been growing concern about psychiatric side effects from ADHD medications like Strattera, Ritalin, and Concerta. The researchers discovered that these hallucinations occur in one or two children out of every 100 “person years.”
There’s no doubt that it was the ADHD drugs that were to blame for this. The study reported that the placebo group experienced no psychosis or mania episodes. These hallucinations are by no means pleasant diversions.
“We might hear about a child with tactile hallucinations, where kids feel like they have bugs on them,” according to Dr. Roy Boorady, director of the pharmacology service at the NYU Child Study Center. “It’s usually really young kids who are on medications, and once they back off or stop the medications, the sensation is gone.”
But it’s not just a feeling of bugs – it’s also visual. The kids experiencing the hallucinations can feel or even see bugs, worms or snakes crawling all over their bodies. As if it’s some kind of comfort, Boorady adds that “these reactions are very rare” – so much so that he doesn’t think parents should even be concerned about these kinds of psychiatric reactions.
That’s easy for him to say, but I’m sure the memory of these hallucinations is anything but rare for the poor kids who’ve lived through them.
Regardless of how rare these reactions are, it’s important to factor in that 4.5 million kids are currently prescribed these ADHD medications – that’s eight percent of all the kids in the U.S.! So this means that could be hundreds, if not thousands of kids who are suffering from these hallucinations.
It’s amazing that a number that large can be so easily shrugged off by a doctor. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that an FDA-backed study would be unfazed by such a discovery. After all, I recently told you about data complied by the CDC that linked ADHD treatments to other even more threatening side effects like stroke, cardiac issues, high blood pressure … so what’s a few hallucinations about snakes?
