“As the diagnoses and treatment with medication of ADHD have increased in the U.S., these exposures have also increased, which means we really do need to pay more attention … and for different age groups, come up with different strategies to prevent them,” says Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

As of 2016, an estimated 6.1 million children between the ages of 2 and 17 had at some point been diagnosed with ADHD, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and survey data. About 6 in 10 currently with ADHD took medication to treat the neurobehavioral disorder, which can make it extremely difficult for children to focus or sit still.

Between 2003 and 2011, the estimate of children and adolescents diagnosed at some point with ADHD rose from 4.4 million to 6.4 million, though those figures are based on a differently administered survey and represent a smaller age range of 4 to 17.

Brand-name medications for ADHD include Adderall, Concerta and Ritalin. According to the study, most of the more than 156,000 poison-control calls were for those who experienced unintentional exposure to such drugs – a category including young children who accessed poorly stored medications and those a bit older who may have taken too much or the wrong medication. Three-quarters of the calls involved children 12 years old or younger, and most didn’t result in a trip to a health care facility.

But among teenagers, nearly a quarter of calls were for those intentionally abusing or misusing the pills, the study showed. Almost another quarter – nearly 9,000 calls – were related to those between 13 and 19 years old who may have been attempting suicide, which Smith says is “very concerning.”