ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, is a condition that affects focus, self-control, and behavior.
Many children and teens are treated with medications to help manage their symptoms. These medicines can make it easier to concentrate, sit still, and succeed in school.
However, a new study from Finland shows that many kids stay on ADHD medication much longer than expected—and that the long-term safety of these drugs is still uncertain.
The study was done by researchers from the University of Turku, the University of Helsinki, and the Finnish Social Insurance Institution Kela. They found that children and teenagers in Finland take ADHD medication for an average of more than three years.
For some kids, especially boys, the treatment lasted much longer. In fact, for a quarter of the children in the study, the medication period lasted more than seven years.
This is important because when these drugs were approved, they were only required to show they were safe for up to one year. Beyond that, there’s little solid evidence about their long-term effects on growing children. The researchers warn that this is concerning because many kids take these drugs during sensitive periods of brain and body development.
The study looked at almost 41,000 young people who started ADHD medication between 2008 and 2019. The data came from national records of medicine purchases in Finland. Researchers used statistical tools to calculate how long each child stayed on their medication.
They discovered that both gender and the age at which children began medication had a big impact. Boys were more likely to be treated with ADHD medicine, and they stayed on it longer than girls.
Boys who started treatment at age 6 to 8 were the group with the longest average treatment time—6.3 years. For a quarter of these boys, the treatment lasted more than 9 years. This group also made up the largest portion of children who started medication.
These findings are especially worrying because so many of these boys are treated all through their primary school years. The lead researcher, Dr. Päivi Ruokoniemi, said that we still don’t know enough about the long-term safety of these medicines.
While short-term studies and reports suggest the drugs help with symptoms, we don’t have strong, controlled research that shows what happens after many years of use.
She explained that most of the research on long-term effects is based on observation, not controlled experiments. This makes it hard to tell if any changes in health are caused by the medication or by something else.
Because of these unknowns, the researchers recommend that doctors should only prescribe ADHD medication when other methods, such as therapy or behavior strategies, haven’t worked. Even then, both the parents and the child should be told clearly about the possible benefits, risks, and the fact that we don’t yet know everything about long-term use.
They also advise that once a child starts taking ADHD medicine, the need for it should be reviewed every year by a doctor. This would help make sure the medicine is still necessary and effective.
The study was published in the journal *European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry*. It highlights how the use of ADHD medication has been growing rapidly—not just in Finland, but around the world. In Finland alone, the number of children and teens using ADHD drugs has doubled since the years covered in this study, and the rise has been faster than in other Nordic countries.
In conclusion, while ADHD medication can be helpful for many young people, this new research raises important questions. It shows that the medicine is often used for much longer than it was originally tested for, especially in young boys. This means that more studies are urgently needed to understand how these drugs affect children over many years.
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