2001

Few people seem to have commented on the growing number of orphan patients in, or rather out of, the medicare system of British Columbia. These people are unable to locate a family physician and therefore depend on walk-in clinics and emergency departments for all of their primary care requirements. According to recent BCMA correspondence, this problem is not confined to this province, since one in five Ontarians also can no longer find a family physician, with the proportion jumping to one in four outside of the major urban centres.

Introduction

Introduction

With the expansion of the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed.) to include three subtypes of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the reported prevalence rate of ADHD has increased from 3% to 5% to about 12%.[1,2] Also there has been a 2.5-fold increase in stimulant medication prescriptions in adolescents in the USA between 1990 and 1995.[3]

Introduction