Tess September 9th, 2005
Question
My son has ADD and is not Hyper. He is on Ritalin. I don’t want him on any drugs at the age of 9, what other choice do I have? How do I really know if he is ADD?
Answer
You are quite correct to query the prescription of Ritalin for your son, especially if there is some question of whether his diagnosis is correct or not.
Tess September 9th, 2005
Confusing labels for ADHD
For more than 100 years, extremely hyperactive children have been recognized
as having behavioral problems. In the 1970s, doctors recognized that those hyperactive
children also had serious problems with “paying attention.” Researchers
in the 1980s found that some children had severe problems in paying attention,
but little or no problem with hyperactivity at all. That’s when they started
talking about two types of Attention Deficit Disorder: with or without hyperactivity.
Tess September 8th, 2005
Several intervention approaches are available and different therapists tend to prefer one approach or another. Knowing something about the various types of interventions makes it easier for families to choose a therapist that is right for their needs.
Psychotherapy works to help people with ADHD to like and accept themselves despite their disorder. In psychotherapy, patients talk with the therapist about upsetting thoughts and feelings, explore self-defeating patterns of behavior, and learn alternative ways to handle their emotions. As they talk, the therapist tries to help them understand how they can change. However, people dealing with ADHD usually want to gain control of their symptomatic behaviors more directly. If so, more direct kinds of intervention are needed.
Tess September 6th, 2005
Life can be hard for children with ADHD. They’re the ones who are so often in trouble at school, can’t finish a game, and lose friends. They may spend agonizing hours each night struggling to keep their mind on their homework, then forget to bring it to school.
It’s not easy coping with these frustrations day after day. Some children release their frustration by acting contrary, starting fights, or destroying property. Some turn the frustration into body ailments, like the child who gets a stomachache each day before school. Others hold their needs and fears inside, so that no one sees how badly they feel.
Tess September 4th, 2005
For decades, medications have been used to treat the symptoms of ADHD. Three of these medications are methylphenidate (Ritalin), dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine or Dextrostat), and pemoline (Cylert). However, most prescription psychiatric drugs also carry far-reaching negative side effects and risks (see below).
Unfortunately, people think medication is all that’s needed. For lasting improvement, numerous clinicians believe that the most significant, long-lasting gains appear when medication is combined with behavioral therapy, emotional counseling, dietary control and practical support.
The Medication Debate
Tess September 3rd, 2005
Understandably, one of the first questions parents ask when they learn their child has an attention disorder is “Why? What went wrong?”
Health professionals stress that since no one knows what causes ADHD, it doesn’t help parents to look backward to search for possible reasons. There are too many possibilities to pin down the cause with certainty. It is far more important for the family to move forward in finding ways to get the right help.
Tess September 2nd, 2005
One of the difficulties in diagnosing ADHD is that it is often accompanied by other problems. For example, many children with ADHD also have a specific learning disability (LD), which means they have trouble mastering language or certain academic skills, typically reading and math. ADHD is not in itself a specific learning disability. But because it can interfere with concentration and attention, ADHD can make it doubly hard for a child with LD to do well in school.
Tess September 2nd, 2005
The fact is, many things can produce these behaviors. Anything from chronic fear to mild seizures can make a child seem overactive, quarrelsome, impulsive, or inattentive. For example, a formerly cooperative child who becomes overactive and easily distracted after a parent’s death is dealing with an emotional problem, not ADHD.
Tess September 2nd, 2005
Not everyone who is overly hyperactive, inattentive, or impulsive has an attention disorder. Since most people sometimes blurt out things they didn’t mean to say, bounce from one task to another, or become disorganized and forgetful, how can specialists tell if the problem is ADHD?
To assess whether a person has ADHD, specialists consider several critical questions: Are these behaviors excessive, long-term, and pervasive? That is, do they occur more often than in other people the same age? Are they a continuous problem, not just a response to a temporary situation? Do the behaviors occur in several settings or only in one specific place like the playground or the office?
Tess September 2nd, 2005
ADHD is not like a broken arm, or strep throat. Unlike these two disorders, ADHD does not have clear physical signs that can be seen in an x-ray or a lab test. ADHD can only be identified by looking for certain characteristic behaviors, and these behaviors vary from person to person. Scientists have not yet identified a single cause behind all the different patterns of behavior–and they may never find just one. Rather, someday scientists may find that ADHD is actually an umbrella term for several slightly different disorders.
Pet Herbal Info
