Therapists and their patients are dealing with a nationwide shortage of Adderall,
one of the best known treatments for ADHD.
According to national data Adderall prescriptions for
adults jumped 15% from 2020 to 2021.
Some experts blamed the shortage on the explosion of online mental
health providers that diagnose cases and prescribe a lot of medication.
>> It's true there has been a pretty devastating shortage
of medication for ADHD patients.
And while Adderall tends to get most of the news coverage, it certainly
impacts other drugs that tend to be prescribed to people suffering from ADHD.
Now before I get to the details of the story and
why it is that we're experiencing the kind of shortage we are experiencing.
Just wanna note that even prior to the pandemic there was
a problem with the over diagnosis and over prescription of these drugs.
These are stimulants, they are highly addictive,
they are often abused which is why they are considered they're
the kind of prescription drugs controlled substances.
They're considered controlled substances and
they undergo certain regulations that other prescription drugs do not
undergo because of the high likelihood of abuse while using these drugs.
Now with that said though,
the problem has actually gotten much worse during the coronavirus pandemic and
it has a lot to do with social media and looser restrictions on telemedicine.
Now just to give you a sense of how much the prescriptions for
these stimulants have gone up in recent years.
The number of ADHD diagnoses in 2010 were
almost five times what they were in 1999.
And between 2007 and 2016,
the number of diagnoses of ADHD in adults actually more than doubled.
And now we have this emergence of social media where there is both user
generated content on ADHD and the symptoms they're experiencing and
what they're doing to cope with that.
And also ads coming from telemedicine companies that make it seem as
though ADHD includes all these symptoms that honestly anyone can relate to, right?
Even if you do not have ADHD, you've certainly experienced days where you're
struggling to focus where your attention span just feels shorter than usual.
We all have days like that, it doesn't mean that you have ADHD.
But the way these ads are put together would make you think that you're
definitely experiencing the symptoms of ADHD.
And you need to talk to your doctor about potentially getting treatment for it.
And usually these ads direct you to use a telemedicine service that
they're advocating for in the ad.
Now, what's really going on is once the pandemic started,
people are less comfortable going to the hospital to visit their doctor for
annual checkups or if they notice that there's something they're experiencing.
There's something wrong, they're less likely to feel comfortable going over to
a hospital that is completely overwhelmed with coronavirus patients and
that's totally understandable.
So in the beginning of the pandemic, one of the things that the Trump
administration did was loosen the regulations on telemedicine.
And when you're dealing with controlled substances like Adderall,
there are certain regulations in place that essentially force the patient
to go meet with a doctor face to face.
You have to have regular meetings and
checkups with your doctor in order to get that prescription refilled.
But with the looser regulations on telemedicine, suddenly you have people
who can connect with a doctor online through the comfort of their own homes and
not have to go through the extra trouble of meeting a doctor face to face.
So that was one of the restrictions that was really loosened pertaining to these
controlled substances like Adderall.
At the same time though, you have these ads that you see on places like TikTok,
I've certainly come across these ads and
again the ads make it seem like you definitely have ADHD.
Because you're experiencing all of these symptoms.
Now, I wanna go to this video that talks a little bit about the user generated
content that you might come across if you're on TikTok or Instagram,
let's take a look.
>> 1 million analysis of popular TikTok videos found that talking about mental
illness on social media can be tricky though.
>> Half of the videos that we had sampled contained misleading or
potential misinformation and most of these videos that we found
were that they were uploaded typically by users of the platform.
Not a lot of health care professionals around the platform and
typically it was mostly user generated content.
>> And look we're saying that this same issue when it comes to Randos giving
financial advice on social media.
They're not fiduciaries, they're not professional financial advisors,
they're just random people telling you should do X, Y and Z to earn money or
you should invest in X, Y or Z to increase your money or your wealth.
And you should not be taking advice from random people on social media,
whether it has to do with your health or your financial situation.
Obviously be an advocate for yourself and go out of your way,
make sure you go out of the way to talk to a real doctor, real professionals.
Because you don't want to needlessly take prescription drugs that could have
some harmful effects on your life on your body.
And in the case of these wanna be financial advisors,
you don't wanna invest your money into something like I don't know, FTX.
And lose whatever you have [LAUGH] invested into something
that will be squandered by fraudsters like Sam Beckman Freed.
Now, what's interesting is, what doctors are noticing with
patients showing up and asking them very specific questions.
So for instance Dr Sasha Hamdani,
who's actually a doctor who has been diagnosed with ADHD,
actually does put out some content on TikTok to help correct the misinformation
that's all over the place on social media on this very issue.
And she says, a lot of my patients would hold up their phone to the camera and
be like, here's this video that I saw on TikTok and this is why I have ADHD.
Now, I wanna give you an example of one of the ads, where you're gonna see is
sponsored content on Tiktok and it's exactly part of the problem.
So I don't mean to pick on this particular guy, I'm sure it's sponsored content.
It was an easy way to make some money, but
there are many videos on TikTok that look just like this sound just like this and
it's convincing people that they have ADHD.
And they should talk to a doctor and get their hands on as soon as possible.
So let's take a quick look.
>> Did you finish that paper?
>> What paper?
>> The paper that's due tonight?
>> Yeah, no I've just been staring at a blank document all day.
>> Again?
>> Yeah. >> Just get started
by putting your name at the top.
>> What time is it due?
>> Midnight.
>> Okay, cool.
I'll just wait here in my anxiety and
stare at a wall until 11 when the urgency finally kicks in.
>> Fun. >> Right?
>> Dude you got to get this app called team out?
It's made for ADHD brains like ours.
It helps me out a ton every day.
>> Yeah, guys that is a disastrous ad, so disastrous.
Especially when you consider how young TikTok users are and look at like what
he's selling, really struggling in school, I can't get my work done.
But there's this magic pill, there's a magic pill.
I found a solution, by the way pitchforks dragon in our member
section has a pretty hilarious comment about this.
Imagine selling Adderall as a drug dealer, you guys wanna get high grades.
[LAUGH] I hear what you're saying, but at the same time these are stimulants that
make people who don't actually have ADHD feel like they're high, it's an upper.
So that's part of the reason why it's abused people like the way it makes them
feel but it's also incredibly addictive and can be incredibly destructive.
Now, there's also another side of this that I think is important for
you to know about because with the prevalence of these diagnoses and
people getting these prescriptions.
It's leading to a shortage of the drugs that people with ADHD need to function.
So they're going to pharmacies and
they keep getting told, we don't have it, we don't have it.
I was reading some testimonial stuff from CVS patients like
patients who get their drugs from CVS and other big chain pharmacies.
And apparently, the pharmacists if you call to ask if they have it in stock,
since it's a controlled substance they won't tell you whether or
not you have it in stock.
So some of the patients literally have to drive from one pharmacy to another
pharmacy to another pharmacy to see whether or not they can find a pharmacist
who has the drugs that they need in stock so they can function.
ADHD is real, okay?
There are people who do need these drugs to be able to live a good life and
the idea that they're not able to get what they need because people are abusing it
through prescriptions they really shouldn't have is pretty infuriating and
crazy.
And again, if there are opportunities to loosen regulations to
help companies make a lot of money, they're gonna do what they're gonna do.
They're gonna wanna make more money and they're gonna over prescribe the drugs.
So now if some pharmacies have stopped filling prescriptions for
people who received the prescription from a telemedicine company.
I don't know if that's the solution to it because I'm
sure some of those prescriptions are valid.
Right, so how do they determine which prescription is valid and which isn't?
It's a mess.
Now, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention announced in October that there was a shortage of both the brand name and
generic form of Adderall in the United States.
And going back to Dr Sasha Hamdani,
she says logistically it's been a nightmare for patients and
providers, stimulant medications are so highly controlled.
You can't just transfer it to a different pharmacy, you have to cancel a script.
You have to then go find another pharmacy that has it,
by that time it might not be filled because other people have filled it there.
It's a lot of logistical shifting and work that on that front and
that's extremely frustrating for the patient.
And I can imagine that would be frustrating for the patient.
So while it's important to consider ways for
people to see a doctor when they otherwise wouldn't be able to.
It's also important to consider the abuses of looser regulations and
the abuses that could essentially lead to shortages like this,
that that hurts everyone.
It hurts the people who are taking drugs that they really shouldn't be taking of
course, but also hurts the people who actually need those drugs in order to live
a full and good life.
And that's what we're seeing.
And there is a limit to the amount of stimulants pharmacies can sell
in a given year and that's because of the fact that it's a controlled substance.
So those limits, the loosened regulations when it came to telemedicine,
the profit motive behind health care in this country.
All of that is just a dangerous stew that has led to the problem that we're
seeing today.