One in six college students misuse ADHD stimulant drugs
Senior psychology major Kari Benson has seen that firsthand with fellow students. As a sophomore, she had started working with associate professor Kate Flory in the University of South Carolina's Parenting and Family Research Center, studying social impairment in children with ADHD. Friends would ask her what she was up to, and once word got around that she was doing ADHD research, a few acquaintances that didn't know her very well started making requests. "People would ask me if I could get them Adderall or Ritalin," Benson says. "I realized that this was a pretty prevalent issue on campus, and I wanted to see what I could do about it." She set out to analyze collegiate misuse of stimulant ADHD drugs, earning a grant as a Magellan Scholar from the Office of Undergraduate Research to help put together a survey of Carolina students. To familiarize herself with previous work in the area, she prepared a literature review that Flory thought merited publ...