The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on ADHD medicine consumption in 47 countries and regions

• Published in: European neuropsychopharmacology Vol. 73; pp. 24 - 35
• Main Authors: Gimbach, Sophie, Vogel, Daniel, Fried, Roland, Faraone, Stephen V., Banaschewski, Tobias, Buitelaar, Jan, Döpfner, Manfred, Ammer, Richard
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Elsevier B.V 01.08.2023; Published by Elsevier B.V
• Subjects: ADHD; COVID-19 pandemic; Defined daily dose; Oxford stringency index; Pharmacoepidemiology; Time series forecasting; Oxford stringency index; Pharmacoepidemiology; Time series forecasting; ADHD; COVID-19 pandemic; Defined daily dose
• ISSN: 0924-977X; 1873-7862
• DOI: 10.1016/j.euroneuro.2023.04.008

•The global ADHD medication consumption increased from 2019 to 2020 only by 0.69%.•In 2020, the mean consumption per country was on average 6.2% lower than forecasted.•In 2021, the usage levels exceeded the pre-pandemic forecasts by 1.60% on average.•High correlation between consumption drop and strength of anti-Covid measures.•The pandemic is likely to serve as catalyst for consumption growth in the long run. The objective of this study is to quantify the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medication consumption globally and nationally using pharmaceutical sales data from 2014 to 2021 across 47 countries and regions. A seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average model (SARIMA) was applied to the time series until the end of 2019 at country level and used for the prediction of the ADHD medication consumption in 2020 and 2021. The deviations from the actual to the forecasted sales, which simulate the development without the emergence of COVID-19, yield estimates for the pandemic's impact. In 36 of the 47 countries and regions, the actual sales in 2020 were lower than predicted, with an average relative drop of 6.2% in defined daily doses (DDD) per 1000 inhabitants per day at country-level. In 2021, most countries recorded actually higher ADHD medication use than predicted at the end of 2019. On average, the consumption increased per country by 1.60%. The deviations strongly correlate with the stringency of anti-pandemic government policies. The findings suggest that the pandemic led to a substantially lower consumption of ADHD medication in 2020. However, in 2021 the pandemic had an accelerating effect as the increasing consumption trends are more pronounced than before the pandemic.