Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra feature stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write a 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Doctors Assess Risks of ADHD Medication, 03/13/06
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june06/add_3-13.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What is Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder?

2. How is ADHD diagnosed?

3. What are medication side effects?

4. How do you make decisions about what kinds of medicines to take?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What is a "black box" label?

A government panel has recommended the strongest safety warning - a "black box" label - for Ritalin, Adderall and other drugs used to treat Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD.

2. What is the FDA?

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the government agency that studies medicines to make sure they're safe and really work, has been studying ADHD drugs, such as Ritalin, since 1955.

3. Why did the FDA assemble an advisory panel?

Last month, the FDA assembled a panel of doctors to assess reports of heart problems, including 25 instances of sudden death, in patients taking ADHD drugs and concerns that the drugs are over-prescribed.

4. What did the panel recommend?

The panel voted unanimously to recommend "medication guides" for ADHD drugs warning patients of potential heart risks.

The vote for the stronger "black box" warning was close - passing on a vote of 8 to 7.

5. How many Americans have ADHD?

Almost 8% of Americans, mostly children, have been diagnosed with ADHD. The rates are especially high among teenage boys, 11%.

6. What are the symptoms of ADHD?

People with ADHD have difficulty concentrating and controlling their behavior.

7. How many people with ADHD take stimulants and how do they help?

Roughly half of those diagnosed are treated with medical stimulants. Even though increased activity is a symptom of the disorder, for reasons doctors don't fully understand, stimulants like Ritalin, help calm impulsive behavior and activity and boost the attention of kids with ADHD.

8. What are some of the risks associated with taking ADHD drugs?

Although the effects of Ritalin and Adderall are not as strong as amphetamines, they are known to raise blood pressure and heart rate.

There have been scattered reports of heart attacks in adult patients taking ADHD-but the data does not solidly link them to the drugs.

Nissen is concerned by the length of time the average ADHD patient takes medications.

"Raising blood pressure of a child or adult continuously over many years worries me," Nissen said

9. How many prescriptions of ADHD medications are filled each month?

"Prescriptions for adults jumped 90 percent from March 2002 to about 1 million filled each month as of June 2005," FDA researcher Andrew Mosholder told the panel.

The number of prescriptions for children is twice as high, 2 million prescriptions per month.

10. How do the prescription rates for ADHD vary across the country?

Prescriptions rates vary widely by community. In many rural and minority communities, very few teens are diagnosed or treated for ADHD.

By contrast, children in suburban, city and private schools are much more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. In some schools, as many as one in five students take Ritalin.

11. Why do the prescription rates vary?

LeFever says the problem is caused by two overlapping forces: local pediatricians who are inclined to diagnose ADHD, and parents who want their children to perform well in school.

 

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. What does the article say about why prescription rates for ADHD medicines vary so widely by community? Do you think your school would have a high or low rate? Why?

2. How are medications regulated in the United States? Is this a good system? How does it compare to other countries?

3. What symptoms should someone taking ADHD medications report to their doctor?

Write a 300-500 word essay on either of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.