Various research articles1 have been published on the prevalence of stimulant medicine (Adderall, Concerta, Ritalin) abuse among undergraduate students.
By "abuse of stimulant medicine," I am referring to the practice of students taking prescription medication that is prescribed to someone else (or, that is prescribed to them under false pretenses) in order to improve their focus and concentration while studying.
There is some anecdotal evidence of university faculty taking Adderall and related medications to enhance academic performance (and not to treat an attention disorder).
Is there any reference to research2 on the prevalance of stimulant medicine abuse among university faculty?
1 Here is a review article that covers some of them:
Varga, Matthew D. "Adderall abuse on college campuses: a comprehensive literature review." Journal of evidence-based social work 9.3 (2012): 293-313. DOI: 10.1080/15433714.2010.525402
2 I am looking for answers that are a reference to such a study. I am not looking for answers from anecdotal evidence not supported by a study or citation. I am also not looking for answers explaining why such a study is unlikely to exist, or why it should not be trusted if it did.
Answer
There were several prominent publications in Nature, spurred by a survey that they conducted of their readers who were able to broadly identify their area of work. See this link here for information about the survey, which also cites the papers that were published in Nature. http://network.nature.com/groups/naturenewsandopinion/forum/topics/1309
In researching this topic, I used google scholar and the search terms "stress stimulants faculty -students" and published 2008 or later to arrive at meaningful search results.
The most likely reason there is more work published on student use is that students as a demographic group are both easier to study and are a more similar group of cohorts than faculty as a demographic group, which are more diverse in age, race, ethnicity, etc.
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