stimulant medication

What should come first to treat ADHD in children, behavior therapy or stimulant medication?

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Stim­u­lant med­ica­tion treat­ment and behav­ior ther­a­py are cur­rent­ly the two child ADHD treat­ments with the strongest research sup­port. How­ev­er, when par­ents begin treat­ment for their child, or when pro­fes­sion­als are ini­ti­at­ing treat­ment with a new client, there is no research to guide the deci­sion of which approach to begin with.

Is it bet­ter to start with med­ica­tion treat­ment and add behav­ior ther­a­py if need­ed? Or, should behav­ior ther­a­py come first with med­ica­tion added if the child’s response is not suf­fi­cient? Or, is it always prefer­able to begin with com­bined treat­ment? [Read more…] about What should come first to treat ADHD in chil­dren, behav­ior ther­a­py or stim­u­lant medication?

Will digital therapeutics complement or replace stimulant medications to address inattention and “silent” cognitive issues?

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Akili Inter­ac­tive: Dig­i­tal pedi­atric ADHD ther­a­peu­tic per­forms well with or with­out accom­pa­ny­ing stim­u­lant ther­a­py (Mobi­Health News):

“Dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic com­pa­ny Akili Inter­ac­tive has announced the first results of an open-label, mul­ti­site pedi­atric ADHD tri­al pro­vid­ing some patients with the company’s video game-like treat­ment along­side a stim­u­lant medication.

Accord­ing to the com­pa­ny, both those who received the AKL-T01 ther­a­py with (n = 130) or with­out (n = 76) accom­pa­ny­ing stim­u­lant med­ica­tion saw sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments one month after [Read more…] about Will dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics com­ple­ment or replace stim­u­lant med­ica­tions to address inat­ten­tion and “silent” cog­ni­tive issues?

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

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 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 were 364 adults who were diag­nosed with ADHD in child­hood along with 264 demo­graph­i­cal­ly matched con­trols. [Read more…] about Study: Hav­ing ADHD costs $1.1 mil­lion in low­er life­time earn­ings, even when “treat­ed”

Initial study finds promise and limitations in using virtual reality (VR) to treat ADHD

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Giv­en the lim­i­ta­tions of exist­ing evi­dence-based ADHD treat­ments, i.e., stim­u­lant med­ica­tion and behav­ior ther­a­py — research on nov­el inter­ven­tion approach­es con­tin­ues to be important.

Cog­ni­tive train­ing is one such approach that has been sug­gest­ed as a poten­tial adjunct or even replace­ment for med­ica­tion treat­ment. While cog­ni­tive train­ing takes dif­fer­ent forms, e.g., com­put­er­ized atten­tion train­ing, work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing, the basic idea is that by repeat­ed­ly prac­tic­ing cog­ni­tive tasks relat­ed to atten­tion, one’s abil­i­ty to focus and attend will improve. In oth­er words, [Read more…] about Ini­tial study finds promise and lim­i­ta­tions in using vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR) to treat ADHD

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

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adult_adhdAlthough 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 like­ly to derive rough­ly equiv­a­lent ben­e­fits from ther­a­py alone. [Read more…] about Study: Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py (CBT) + Med­ica­tion out­per­forms CBT alone to treat ADHD symp­toms among adults. At the same time…

ADHD & the brain: Does ADHD treatment improve long-term academic, social and behavioral outcomes?

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brain-profile.

The ADHD challenge

The core symp­toms of ADHD fre­quent­ly cause sig­nif­i­cant impair­ment in aca­d­e­m­ic, social and behav­ioral func­tion­ing that adverse­ly impact indi­vid­u­als’ qual­i­ty of life. These symp­toms often per­sist into adult­hood, poten­tial­ly com­pro­mis­ing an indi­vid­u­al’s func­tion­ing over many years. Under­stand­ing how ADHD impacts long-term func­tion­ing, and whether adverse long-term affects are dimin­ished with treat­ment, is [Read more…] about ADHD & the brain: Does ADHD treat­ment improve long-term aca­d­e­m­ic, social and behav­ioral outcomes?