While the ‘gold-standard’ clinical research approach is the most valuable for establishing the scientific support for any treatment, it is not without shortcomings as a guide for parents seeking treatment for their child. There are several important reasons for this.

Getting diagnosed can help you understand aspects of your life that didn’t make sense before and can help you find a path to a more fulfilling, less stressful life. I’ve talked about this a lot in other posts. However, it’s all anecdotal. What about some hard data on what happens to adults with ADHD after they get diagnosed? Well, look no further than a new study from researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden.

Information from brain MRIs can help identify people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and distinguish among subtypes of the condition, according to a study appearing online in the journal Radiology...While clinical diagnosis and subtyping of ADHD is currently based on reported symptoms, psychoradiology, which applies imaging data analysis to mental health and neurological conditions, has emerged in recent years as a promising tool for helping to clarify diagnoses.

Childhood trauma and other stressful life events may result in negative memory bias—the preferential and more frequent recall of negative memories compared to positive ones—which is associated with symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adults, according to results of a study published in ADHD Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorders.

The key to any organizing system is using it. Unfortunately, most organizing systems are developed by linear thinkers: those students who begin each semester by writing down every assignment on their (perfectly neat) color-coded planner, update their to-do lists daily and have perfectly organized closets...I am an organized person, but I am not a linear thinker. My thinking tends to be grouped by projects, with one idea spinning off into five other directions.

When asked to describe a typical child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), most people would describe a young boy who climbs on things, is impatient and does not do what he is told. Few people would describe a bubbly young girl with lots of friends, who works hard to get good grades.

When a child is diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), they may be at risk for developing other mental health-related disorders in adulthood...While researchers have much to learn about the neurobiological interaction between the two disorders, they have estimated that anywhere from 9% to 35% of adults with bipolar disorder also have ADHD.