Younger students get ADHD

From CuriousCat Engineering Blog:
Nearly 1 million Children Potentially Misdiagnosed with ADHD in the USA

Nearly 1 million children in the United States are potentially misdiagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder simply because they are the youngest – and most immature – in their kindergarten class, according to new research by, Todd Elder, a Michigan State University economist.

Some of the numbers:

The youngest kindergartners were 60 percent more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than the oldest children in the same grade. Similarly, when that group of classmates reached the fifth and eighth grades, the youngest were more than twice as likely to be prescribed stimulants. Overall, the study found that about 20 percent – or 900,000 – of the 4.5 million children currently identified as having ADHD likely have been misdiagnosed.

Psychiatrists and educators must be more careful. When you're looking for a reason why Johnny can't sit still, you're likely to see the reason you most want to see or the one you're just had hours of inservice about.