Consistent use of ADHD medication may stunt growth by 2 inches, large study finds

___ The Mul­ti­modal Treat­ment Study of ADHD (MTA Study) is the largest ADHD treat­ment study ever con­duct­ed — near­ly 600 7–9‑year-old chil­dren with ADHD were ran­dom­ly assigned to one of four inter­ven­tions: 1) Care­ful­ly mon­i­tored med­ica­tion treat­ment; 2) Inten­sive behav­ior ther­a­py; 3) Med­ica­tion Treat­ment com­bined with Behav­ior Ther­a­py; or 4) Com­mu­ni­ty Care (par­ents obtained what­ev­er treatment…

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Studies reinforce the critical importance of ADHD treatment monitoring

__________ As the new school year approach­es, let me high­light the essen­tial val­ue of ADHD treat­ment mon­i­tor­ing. Even when a child’s treat­ment has been going well, response to treat­ment can change over time. This is true for med­ica­tion treat­ment, or any oth­er treat­ment a child is receiv­ing. By reg­u­lar­ly mon­i­tor­ing how a child is doing…

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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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Study: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) + Medication outperforms CBT alone to treat ADHD symptoms among adults. At the same time…

Although med­ica­tion is the pri­ma­ry treat­ment for adults with ADHD, and has good empir­i­cal sup­port, many adults would rather not take it. For these adults with ADHD, it would be help­ful to know whether med­ica­tion is like­ly to pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits above and beyond those they would gain from well-con­­duc­t­ed ther­a­py, or whether they are…

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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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