Teens with ADHD are more likely than those without the attention disorder to smoke, drink alcohol, and use drugs. A new study from Boston and just published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine suggests that teen girls who receive medical treatment for ADHD are less likely than those who don't get ADHD meds to get involved with butts, booze, and drugs. The same team had already shown that boys who receive stimulant medication also benefit in this way. Here is a portion of the article about the study in ScienceDaily. (The Dr. Wilens quoted here is one of the investigatorsl.)
"Right now we can't say if the observed protective effect of stimulant
treatment will continue into adulthood or disappear as it did in our
studies in young men," Wilens explains. "But we suspect that the longer
a girl is successfully treated for ADHD, the more likely she is to be
at reduced risk for smoking and substance use or abuse. We can
confidently say that stimulant treatment does not increase the risk of
future substance abuse or smoking in girls with ADHD and at least
delays the onset of cigarette smoking and substance abuse." Wilens is
an associate professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School."
You can read the original article summary here.
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