The rate of WA kids being prescribed medication to treat ADHD has climbed 40 per cent in just three years.

The increase comes as the Australian Medical Association warned society was becoming “less tolerant” of children who have trouble learning.

“Our job (as GPs) is to assess those children and ask, ‘Is this really ADHD or do we just have an over-anxious teacher or parent or an over-demanding school or a school that is simply not tolerant of a student that is being a bit different?’,” AMA WA Council of GP president Simon Torvaldsen said.

“We need to make sure we’re not treating those children when they don’t need to be treated and look at other ways of managing the situation. Balanced against that, I think we also have to recognise that true ADHD is a potentially devastating condition in terms of learning and development.”

Data from the Australian Atlas of Healthcare Variation showed in 2016-17 there were 78,926 prescriptions dispensed for ADHD medicines for WA children aged under 17, excluding private prescriptions. This equated to a crude rate of 13,401 prescriptions per 100,000 children.

This compared to a rate of 9522 prescriptions per 100,000 in 2013-14 – a rise of 40 per cent. WA’s increase was much higher than the national rise of 30 per cent.

The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, which produces the Atlas reports, said it was “unclear” why the nation’s dispensing rate and volume of ADHD medicines had increased.

The commission said further investigation was required to determine “what ongoing vigilance is needed to promote safe and appropriate use of these medicines”.

Dr Torvaldsen said despite the dispensing rise, the prescribing rate was only 1.4 per cent. It was estimated about 7 per cent of Australian children were affected by ADHD.

He said it was possible that more children were being identified as having ADHD, rather than there being an issue of over-treating. “But I also think that society is less tolerant of children who can’t learn,” he said.

Dr Torvaldsen said parents should be “wary” of any medical practitioners wanting to “jump the gun” by medicating as a first option rather than using it as the last option.

“As a rule of thumb, medication is not something you want to jump into,” he said.

He said parents should also not baulk at getting children medicated if it was truly warranted as the harm caused by untreated ADHD “far outweighs the potential side effects of treating them”.