Study: Having ADHD costs $1.1 million in lower lifetime earnings, even when “treated”

 Rel­a­tive­ly few stud­ies have exam­ined the impact of child­hood ADHD on long-term finan­cial out­comes, even though becom­ing self-sup­­port­ing and attain­ing finan­cial inde­pen­dence is an impor­tant devel­op­men­tal task. An espe­cial­ly com­pre­hen­sive look at this issue is pro­vid­ed in a study by Pel­ham et al pub­lished recent­ly in the Jour­nal of Con­sult­ing and Clin­i­cal Psy­chol­o­gy. The Study: Participants…

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Study suggests the real deficit underlying Attention Deficit Disorders is not Attention, but Working Memory

______________________________ Many par­ents have observed that their child with ADHD stays atten­tive and engaged dur­ing ‘high inter­est’ activ­i­ties, e.g., while play­ing video games, but has con­sid­er­able prob­lems stay­ing focused on less inher­ent­ly engag­ing tasks, e.g., doing school­work. This dis­crep­an­cy in atten­tion dur­ing pre­ferred and non-pre­­ferred activ­i­ties has led some to

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5 Must-Read Articles, and an Online Course, to Help Children with ADHD

—– Giv­en the ongo­ing changes and con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing ADHD diag­no­sis and treat­ment, let us high­light 5 key arti­cles writ­ten by Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s Dr. David Rabin­er to sum­ma­rize recent sci­en­tif­ic find­ings and their impli­ca­tions, plus a very rel­e­vant online course to help par­ents and pro­fes­sion­als help chil­dren with ADHD. 1. Study finds large gaps between research and practice…

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Study: Rates of ADHD diagnosis and medication treatment continue to increase substantially

— Begin­ning in about 1990, sub­stan­tial increas­es in the rates of ADHD diag­no­sis and med­ical treat­ment were found in sev­er­al nation­al­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ples of US physi­cian office vis­its. For exam­ple, between 1995–96 and 2007-08, the num­ber of office vis­its at which an ADHD diag­no­sis was made increased by over 400% in adults — from 3.1…

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Discouraging new findings about pediatric care for children with ADHD: Often, best-practice guidelines are not followed

Most chil­dren with ADHD receive their care from com­­mu­ni­­ty-based pedi­a­tri­cians. Giv­en the large num­ber of school-age chil­dren who require eval­u­a­tion and treat­ment ser­vices for ADHD, and the adverse impact that poor qual­i­ty care can have on chil­dren’s devel­op­ment, it is impor­tant for chil­dren to rou­tine­ly receive care in the com­mu­ni­ty that is con­sis­tent with best-practice…

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