Ritalin prescribed to children with ADHD might provide mental health benefits that extend far into adulthood, a new study suggests.

Children given methylphenidate — the most-prescribed ADHD med — appear to have a lower risk of serious psychotic disorders as adults, including schizophrenia, according to findings published March 25 in JAMA Psychiatry.

“The fact that early treatment was associated with a lower long-term risk of psychosis suggests these medications may do more than manage symptoms in childhood — they may also have longer term protective effects against severe mental illness,” senior researcher Dr. Ian Kelleher said in a news release. He’s a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

These results might help quell recent concerns among parents, doctors and policymakers that stimulant medications for ADHD could increase risk of psychosis later in life, researchers said.

“We know that when children with ADHD are followed into adulthood, a small but significant minority develop psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia,” Kelleher said. “A critical question has been whether ADHD medication causes that risk, or whether this is a case where correlation does not equal causation.”

The likely answer: “Our findings suggest the medication itself is not driving that risk,” Kelleher said.

For the study, researchers tracked nearly 4,000 young people diagnosed with ADHD, of whom about 7 in 10 (69%) were prescribed the drug methylphenidate. The drug is sold under the brand names Ritalin and Concerta, among others.

In all, 222 of the children had been diagnosed with psychosis by age 22, but results showed that long-term treatment with methylphenidate was not linked to any increased risk of psychosis.

In fact, secondary analysis showed that people diagnosed with ADHD in childhood and prescribed methylphenidate wound up with lower rates of psychosis as adults, researchers said. But if the drugs weren’t prescribed until they were teens or adults, no such benefit was found, researchers noted.

The results suggest a need for age-specific research into ADHD, said lead researcher Colm Healy, a research fellow at University College Dublin in Ireland.

“There are important developmental differences between the childhood brain and the teenage or adult brain,” Healy said in a news release. “We can’t assume that the effects of stimulant medication will be the same across different stages of life. Given the rapid rise in adult ADHD treatment, understanding these differences is now an urgent priority.”