Doctors with Attention Deficit

Students Claim ADHD to Get Drugs

Students who want to try ADHD medication for recreational purposes or to boost their grades find it all too easy to convince physicians they have ADHD

Though the U.S. government defines Adderall as a Schedule 2 drug, getting doctors to prescribe Adderall is a snap for college students looking for an easy way to ace their exams. One University of Massachusetts student reporter decided to interview her fellow students to investigate the matter. During one such interview, a fellow student claimed she held her primary health care doctor in the palm of her hand when she begged him to refer her to a psychiatrist who offers evaluations for attention deficit disorder (ADD).

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Transparent Questions

During the psychiatrist’s assessment, the student responded to a series of transparent questions like, “Do you have a hard time concentrating or focusing?” The student said it took no mental gymnastics to figure out what responses would generate a diagnosis of ADD so that she would be entitled to the drugs she sought. However, the student was canny enough to only posit a certain number of symptoms so that she wouldn’t be too obvious in her quest to be diagnosed with a disorder she didn’t have.

The upshot was that the unwitting psychiatrist found she had nine out of nine signs of ADD without the addition of the nine signs that would have added the “H” of hyperactivity to the diagnosis (ADHD). Less than 30 minutes after the examination began, the student had a prescription for Adderall in her hot little hand.

Little Uniformity

The reporter discovered that there is little uniformity in the diagnostic criteria used by physicians to diagnose ADD. Therefore, speaking of a “test for ADD” is misleading. Of the three students the reporter interviewed, two answered a series of questions or were asked to describe their symptoms while the third student was given a more complex diagnostic test.

In the case of the student described above, there was some “prepping” of the patient: the psychiatrist told her that ADD has nine symptoms and that if someone had a certain number of these symptoms, they can be prescribed medications to help them concentrate.

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The student who received the most rigorous testing was also diagnosed with ADD and given Concerta, a medication similar to Adderall.

The upshot is that a student need not undergo a standard test in order to get a prescription for Adderall, which is an amphetamine. It’s more about finding the doctor who doesn’t mind writing out a script for the student who complains of ADD/ADHD symptoms. In every case, the goal is a legal method for procuring drugs that can be used to help students stay awake for all-night cramming during the final exams period.

Diane Fedorchak, director of Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students (BASICS), says that only some 5% of the study body suffers from ADHD while another 8% of U of M students report using stimulants like Ritalin, Adderall, or Concerta during the past 30 days without benefit of a prescription.

Related articles

• Ritalin and Adderall Abuse (community.cognibeat.com)
• Most Kids With ADHD Take Medication (webmd.com)
• Adderall Alters Brain, Claims a Young Life (abcnews.go.com)