Abstract
Psychostimulant medication is considered a mainstay in the treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); however, research suggests that the typical duration of medication treatment for children and youth may be <3 years. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychostimulant treatment persistence for children and adolescents in New South Wales, Australia. This study used survival analysis to assess duration of medication treatment on a large administrative database of children and youth from New South Wales, Australia. Several models were fit to evaluate differences in survival rates among decades (1990-1999 vs. 2000-2010), gender, and age. Results showed that: 1) Overall median treatment time (i.e., median survival time) was 1.96 years (99% CI=1.93, 1.99); 2) there were small, but significant changes over time in duration of treatment; 3) females had shorter treatment duration than males; and 4) there were relatively large differences in treatment duration across age groups. These results indicate that the majority of children and youth receive medication treatment for only a small portion of childhood/adolescence, and that there are differential patterns in treatment duration across age groups.
Published Version
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