The shortage of medication for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder has popularized some alternative solutions.

Dr. Marc Siegel appeared on America Reports on Thursday to further explain what caused the shortage and how parents can still help their children mitigate their symptoms from the diagnosis. This shortage began a year ago and was coupled with a 50% increase in demand across the last decade. Two supply chains, one in Israel and the other in Japan, have been crippled by a shortage.

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"Both are offloading a lot of production, and they are relying on active pharmaceutical ingredients from China, so that’s the problem. And they are generics and a very narrow profit margin. So, as soon as they find they can’t make the 'rubber meet the road,' they back off and don’t produce, and that's the key issue," Seigel said. "The FDA is pushing them to catch up. They're not catching up."

According to Seigel, while there are perceptions that ADHD is "overdiagnosed," that is not the case for most overall groups. So there are cases where children must be treated or suffer "the inability to focus, having some aggressivity, [and/or] increased frustration."

"Sixty percent of the time, it’s treatable by medication," Seigel said. "But about 50%, you need some kind of therapy involved, and we have a huge shortage of mental health professionals in the United States, especially coming out of the pandemic."

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports, according to a national survey of parents, that there are 6 million children diagnosed with ADHD as of 2019. The largest number of those diagnosed are between 12 to 17 years old, at 3.3 million.

Alaska, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Illinois have the highest rates of ADHD treatment at anywhere between 52% and 72% of those diagnosed receiving treatment per the CDC.