At team of American scientists carrying out the Multimodal Treatment Study of children with ADHD found that, over a three-year period, drug treatments for hyperactivity such as Ritalin and Concerta brought no demonstrable improvement in children's behaviour, although over the short term they could be of some benefit. The team also found that the drugs could stunt normal growth.

The research, the results of which were released on November 12, 2007, and shown on the BBC programme Panorama, raises important questions about the value of drug treatment in the long term. According the Guardian report GPs in the UK prescribed Ritalin and other drugs to around 55,000 children in 2006.

The HACSG has been consistently of the opinion that treating the symptoms of this disorder with medication provides no long term solution and may, in fact, as this new study shows, do a lot more harm than good.

Professor W.Pelham of the University of Buffalo commented that he thought the beneficial effects of medication had been exaggerated after the first studies were done in the 1990s. The new study, he said, had shown that the beneficial effects were none, and that the children suffered a substantial decrease in their rate of growth. "In the short term medication will help the child behave better", commented Prof.Pelham, "in the long term it won't. That information should be made very clear to parents".