ADD, $100-Billion Dollars!!! (Say it like Dr. Evil)

There’s good news and there is bad news. Let’s start with the good news…….ADD can be a good thing that offers us the ability to harness an incredible  mountain of energy, creativity, intelligence and many other positive traits. Now, the bad news…. up to 45% of prisoners have ADHD and ADHD’ers are 4 to 9 times more likely to commit crimes and go to jail than non ADHD’ers. Some very informative information on this topic is located on Pete Quily’s blog adultaddstrengths.com

Now, call me crazy, but….if our society and by society I mean schools, institutions, work place and more actually screened for ADD/ADHD, wouldn’t it in theory allow us to diagnose, treat and reduce the impact of ADD/ADHD?  The UK screens all prisoner for ADHD. Nothing is done in North America though. In the USA, those in jail, prison, on probation or on parole is about 7.3 million, or 1 in every 31 adults. Actual people serving time is a US jail right now is approximately 2.3 million. In Canada, the current jail population is approximately 190,000.

It’s time to put our math skills to work with a simple formula: Canadian & American people in jail is about 2.5 million x 45% = 1,125,000 prisoners with ADHD.

With the average cost to keep a prisoner incarcerated in North America of over $100,000 per year, the cost of jailing these 1.125 million ADHD prisoners is over $100-billion annually!!  This number can be made even more dramatic if you place your pinkey finger to your mouth and say “$100-billion dollars” and laugh in an evil way like the Austin Powers character Dr. Evil. Joking aside, these numbers can surly be dramatically reduced if we only took a proactive approach to ADHD with early diagnosis. Can you imagine how powerful it would be if we only took a fraction of that more than $100 billion spent on ADHD prisoners and kick started a proactive diagnosis and treatment program. It makes complete medical, operational and financial sense….which is probably why Government will never do it.