Lower Anxiety in Children w/ADHD using stimulants?

Lower Anxiety in Kids With ADHD by use of Stimulants.

Anxiety is a commonly reported side-effect of psychostimulant treatment. This study was designed to quantify the risk of anxiety as a side effect of psychostimulant treatment for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Here is what they found:

A new review of studies involving nearly 3,000 children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) concludes that, although anxiety has been reported as a side-effect of stimulant medication, psychostimulant treatment for ADHD significantly reduces the risk of anxiety. Thus, patient reports of new-onset or worsening anxiety with the use of psychostimulants are not likely due to the medication and should not necessarily preclude stimulant use in ADHD, according to the authors of the study recently published in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology.

Catherine Coughlin, Michael Bloch, MD, and coauthors from Yale University, New Haven, CT and University of Saõ Paulo School of Medicine, Brazil, emphasize the importance of managing anxiety in children with ADHD, as it can affect how they respond to treatment. In the article "Meta-Analysis: Reduced Risk of Anxiety with Psychostimulant Treatment in Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder", the researchers report a statistically significant reduction in the risk of anxiety associated with psychostimulants compared to placebo, and furthermore, higher doses of psychostimulants appear to be associated with a greater reduction in the risk of anxiety .

"This new information on psychostimulants has the potential to change the way we treat kids with ADHD and improve the quality of their lives," says Harold S. Koplewicz, MD, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology and president of the Child Mind Institute in New York.

Meta-analysis suggests that treatment with psychostimulants significantly reduced the risk of anxiety when compared with placebo. This finding does not rule out the possibility that some children experience increased anxiety when treated with psychostimulants, but suggests that those risks are outweighed by the number of children who experience improvement in anxiety symptoms (possibly as a secondary effect of improved control of ADHD symptoms).

Clinicians should consider rechallenging children with ADHD who report new-onset or worsening anxiety with psychostimulants, as these symptoms are much more likely to be coincidental rather than caused by psychostimulants.

This article was published in Eurekaalert.org