ADHD in the News 2021-12-22

PCPs Don’t Recommend Parent Behavior Management Training Often Enough

Primary care doctors recommend medication more often than behavior management training (PTBM) to parents of children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) within the Packard Children’s Health Alliance, a community based pediatric health care network in the San Francisco, California. PTBM is a first-line treatment for children aged 4-5 with ADHD. A research letter published in JAMA Pediatrics emphasizes the need for early access to behavioral treatment for preschoolers with ADHD.



Is Prescribing Stimulants OK for Comorbid Opioid Use Disorder, ADHD?

One new study showed that from 2007-2017, there was a threefold increase in OUD and comorbid ADHD and that a significant number of these patients received prescription stimulants.



Collaborative study reveals new findings about ADHD in young adulthood

Professor Anita Thapar...writes about the team's latest findings on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). We know ADHD affects adults and not just children, however, we do not know much about the transition from age 16 to 25 years. Our research study, ‘Neurodevelopmental Disorders: What happens when children grow up and why?’, focused on this with the aim to help understand ADHD in young adults.



Exercise, Good Food, Meditation: Alternatives to ADHD Meds

KEY POINTS: Exercise, good food, and meditation can all help treat symptoms of ADHD. There's a connection between a restrictive, “few-foods” diet and a reduction in ADHD symptoms. Physical activity promotes brain growth, enhances learning skills, and may have effects even stronger than healthy foods on ADHD relief.



Artificial food dyes may cause behavior problems. A bill aims to warn parents.

Parents who remove synthetic colors like Red 40 from their kids’ diets call it transformative, but the FDA has said dyes don't affect most children. California hopes to change that.  



“Having ADHD can work very well in banking”

If banks are hiring ADHD types, it's with good reason. A debt capital markets banker who worked at Goldman Sachs for over a decade told us that Goldman's trading floor was full of people with ADHD and that in trading at least, having a brain that jumps between different things but is also able to hyper focus can be a huge advantage.



A new understanding of mental illness

The causes of psychiatric disorders are poorly understood. Now there is evidence that a wide range of early onset psychiatric problems (from depression, anxiety and addictions to dyslexia, bulimia, and ADHD) may be largely due to the combination of just three factors...biological...social...psychological.



Choline transporter in the brain is necessary for tuning out unneeded information

In habituation, an organism gets so used to a ubiquitous sight, smell, sensation or sound that it virtually disappears. Researchers have identified a transporter protein in the brain that plays a vital role in habituation...previous work has shown that variations in the choline transporter have been associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).



Mightier scores $17M for video games teaching emotional regulation to kids

The games are geared toward children who need help with anxiety, tantrums or anger, but also those with diagnoses like ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder and autism spectrum disorder.



Study raises ethical concerns over misleading website claims from neurofeedback providers in the United States

A new study published in the Journal of Cognitive Enhancement investigated the websites of 371 neurofeedback providers in the United States. The overwhelming majority of these providers made claims in relation to at least one clinical condition (e.g., anxiety, ADHD), and a quarter of them used hype words (e.g., “miracle cure”) to do so. Only 36% of providers had a medical degree or a doctoral degree in psychology.