ADD/ADHD medication shortage impacting students this school year

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - It’s been almost a year since the Food and Drug Administration first announced an Adderall shortage. The ongoing situation is now affecting other alternatives and creating more stress for parents across the U.S.

Ochsner doctor Brannon Perilloux said months back, Adderall had a production issue and patients who were taking Adderall had to find other medications to use. He said many got put on another ADD medicine, which created a shortage of all the other medications. Doctors said that without medication, many children with ADHD fail classes, are held back from going to the next grade, may get sent to the principal’s office and have trouble doing homework.

Parents currently are getting a paper script and calling pharmacy after pharmacy to get the particular medicine that their child is on, said Dr. Perilloux.

Doctors said that because the medicines are stimulants, they’re controlled substances and considered by the government to have a high potential for abuse. The FDA said that a surge in prescriptions for stimulant drugs in recent years, paired with the residual effects of manufacturing delays that some companies faced, are among the many factors contributing to the shortage.

Will there ever be light at the end of the tunnel?

“At the present moment, that doesn’t seem to be because the DEA has not indicated that they are going to increase the amounts of medicine that can be produced. Pharmaceutical companies aren’t being transparent on whether or not they are going to produce more or whether they can produce more,” said Dr. Brannon Perilloux, a Pediatrician at Ochsner. “And then the total number of patients is only increasing, not decreasing.”

He said the FDA announced last week that it had approved generic versions of Vyvanse, which is an increasingly popular alternative to Adderall.

It’s commonly prescribed to treat both attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

So what can parents do in the meantime?

“If the child’s already been on ADHD medicine before, there’s not really a good substitute to help the child focus better in school. So minimizing the things that interfere with their kids and their schoolwork is what the parents can do in the meantime,” said Dr. Perilloux.

It could take the pharmacy up to three days to get the medicine.

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