ADHD

WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW®

 ADHD
WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW®

STEPHEN P. HINSHAW
AND
KATHERINE ELLISON

1
 3
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Hinshaw, Stephen P.
ADHD : what everyone needs to know / Stephen P. Hinshaw and
Katherine Ellison.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–022379–3 (pb : alk. paper)—ISBN 978–0–19–022380–9
(hb : alk. paper) 1. Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. I. Ellison,
Katherine, 1957– II. Title.
RJ506.H9H58 2015
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 We dedicate ADHD: What Everyone Needs to Know® to
anyone who has ever wondered whether the occasional joys of
spontaneity are worth the annual costs of replacing lost sunglasses,
keys, and cellphones, and to everyone willing to make the effort to
understand, appreciate, and occasionally forgive the blessings and
challenges of neurodiversity.
 CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii
INTRODUCTION xv

PART I: FACING THE FACTS

1 What Is ADHD? And Why Should We Care? 3

In a Nutshell, What is ADHD? 3

What are the Core Symptoms? 4
Is ADHD Best Considered a Deficit of Attention? Or is the More Basic
Problem a Lack of Self-Control? 8
Aren’t the Symptoms So Often Attributed to ADHD Simply Typical
Characteristics of Being a Young Child (Especially a Boy)? 10
What’s the Difference Between ADHD and ADD? 11
What are Some Good Reasons to Take ADHD Seriously? 12
Focusing On: The Nature of ADHD 13

2 How Widespread Is It? 15

How Prevalent is ADHD in the United States Today,

for Both Children and Adults? 15
How Fast Have US Rates of ADHD Been Increasing, and Why? 16
viii Contents

Do the Rising Rates of ADHD have Anything in Common with the

Similarly Rising Rates of Autism? 19
Is this Disorder Something New or Has it Always Been Around in
Some Form? 20
Focusing On: Prevalence 24

3. What Causes It? 25

What is the Most Common Cause of ADHD? (Spoiler Alert: It Runs in

Families) 25
What Other Factors Might Cause ADHD? 27
What’s Going on inside the Brains of People with ADHD that
Causes the Symptoms? 30
How Much Influence Do Parents Have, if Any—And in What Ways? 33
What Role Do Schools and Academic Pressures Play in Today’s
High Rates of ADHD? 37
What Do People with ADHD Need to Know about Video Games, Social
Media, and Other Forms of Screen Entertainment? 38
Focusing On: Causes 41

4 How Do You Know If You Have It? 43

Under What Circumstances Should Your Child, Your Partner—Or You

Yourself—Be Evaluated for ADHD? 43
Who is Most Likely to Diagnose ADHD? 44
How Should ADHD be Diagnosed? 45
Why Do the Symptoms Show Up More Often in School and on the
Job than at Other Times? 48
Is There Any Objective Assessment for ADHD, Such as a Blood
Test or Brain Scan? 49
What Do You Need to Know about the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual (DSM)? 50
What is Neuropsychological Testing, and is it Ever a Good Idea? 52
 Contents ix

What Kinds of Professional Guidelines Exist for the Diagnosis of ADHD? 53

What Kinds of Problems or Conditions Produce Symptoms Similar to
ADHD, and How Can Clinicians Distinguish Which Issue or Issues to
Treat First? 54
What Additional Disorders or Life Problems Commonly Coexist
with ADHD? 58
Are there Special Considerations for Diagnosing the Inattentive
Form of ADHD? 61
What Can You Do to Make Sure You Get the Best Possible Assessment? 62
Focusing On: Diagnosis 63

5. How Does ADHD Change Over the Lifespan? 65

What Does ADHD Look Like in the Earliest Years of Life? 65

What are the Typical Consequences of ADHD in Grade School? 66
How does ADHD Reveal Itself During Adolescence? 69
To what Extent Does ADHD Persist into Adulthood? 71
How does ADHD Influence People’s Self-Esteem? 72
But Wait! Isn’t ADHD Really a Gift? 73
What Contexts Best Suit People with ADHD? 75
What is the Evidence for Resilience in People with ADHD—that is,
the Chance for Positive Outcomes Despite the Symptoms? 76
Focusing On: ADHD Over the Lifespan 76

6. How Much Does It Matter Who You Are and

Where You Live? 79

How Do ADHD Rates Vary Between Males and Females? 79

How Do the Symptoms Vary Between the Two Genders? 80
What are the Long-Term Consequences of ADHD for Females, Especially
When the Disorder isn’t Addressed in Childhood? 81
What are the Differences in Diagnoses Among Racial and
Economic Groups? 84
x Contents

What Accounts for the Increased Diagnoses Among Racial Minorities

and Low-Income Groups in Recent Years? 84
How Much Do Rates of Diagnoses Differ Among US States, and Why? 86
How Much Do Rates of ADHD Vary Among Nations Outside the
United States? 88
What are the Implications as ADHD Diagnosis and Medications
Become International Phenomena at Increasing Rates? 89
Focusing On: Differences Among Groups 90

PART II: TAKING ACTION

7 How Helpful—or Harmful—Is Medication? 95

How Many US Children and Adults are Taking Medication for ADHD? 95
What are the Most Common Stimulant Medications in Use? 96
When and How Did Doctors First Begin to Treat ADHD with Medication? 97
How Do Stimulant Medicines Work to Help People with ADHD? 98
What are the Chief Pharmaceutical Alternatives to Stimulant
Medications? 101
What are the Side Effects of ADHD Medications? 102
Can Taking Powerful Stimulant Medications at a Young Age Harm a
Developing Brain? 103
What are the “Ritalin Wars”? 104
How Long Do Medication Benefits Last? 106
Why Do So Many Teens with ADHD Stop Taking their Medicine? 107
How Should Doctors Monitor Treatment with Medications? 108
How Can Patients Improve their Chances of Effective Medication
Treatment? 110
How Might Taking ADHD Medication Influence Later Risk for
Substance Abuse? 111
How Likely is it that People Who Take ADHD Medications Will Become
Dependent on Them or Abuse Them? 112
How Much of a Problem is Abuse of ADHD Medications Among
People Who Don’t Have the Disorder? 113
 Contents xi

How Do Other Countries Compare with the United States in

Medication Prescriptions for ADHD? 116
Focusing On: Medication 117

8 How Helpful Is Behavior Therapy, and What

Kinds of Behavior Therapies Help the Most? 119

What is Behavior Therapy? 119

What is Direct Contingency Management? 120
What Can You Expect from Parent-Training Programs? 121
How is Behavior Therapy Used at School? 125
How Effective are Social Skills Groups for Children and Adolescents
with ADHD? 127
What Kinds of Programs Can Help Kids with ADHD Get More
Organized? 128
What is Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, and can it be Effective
for ADHD? 129
Which is Best, After All: Medication or Behavior Therapy? 130
Focusing On: Behavior Therapy 131

9 What Other Strategies May Be Helpful in

Treating ADHD? 133

What Do We Know About the Value of Daily Exercise? 133

How Does Diet Affect ADHD? 135
Which Supplements, if Any, Are Worth a Try? 137
What is Neurofeedback, and How Helpful is it for People with ADHD? 140
Beyond Parent Management Therapy, What Other Help is Available for
Families Coping with ADHD? 143
What Kind of Academic Support is Available from Schools? 145
Focusing On: Additional Treatment Strategies 148
xii Contents

10 What Do You Need to Know About the

“ADHD Industrial Complex”? 149

What Do We Mean by the “ADHD Industrial Complex”? 149

What are Some Particularly Egregious Examples of Schemes to Avoid? 150
Can Marijuana Cure Distraction? And—Are We Pulling Your Leg by
Even Asking? 153
How Helpful are Computer Training Programs? 154
What is Coaching, and How Much Can it Help People with ADHD? 156
How Useful are Other Alternative Treatments for ADHD? 157
What, if Any, Evidence Supports Mindfulness Meditation for ADHD? 158
When Might it Make Sense to Enlist an Occupational Therapist? 159
How Can You Be a Smart Consumer? 159
Focusing On: The ADHD Industrial Complex 161

11 Conclusions and Recommendations 163

Can America’s Rate of ADHD Diagnoses Continue to Grow? 163

How are Big Pharmaceutical Firms Influencing the Surge in ADHD
Diagnoses? 166
What Impact, if Any, Have State Policies Had in the Rise in Diagnoses? 168
What Needs to Be Done to Foster Greater Understanding of the
Reality of ADHD in Girls and Women? 170
What Do Today’s High Rates of ADHD Say about Our Culture? Is this a
Warning Sign We Need to Address? 171
What Would Some Sensible, Evidence-Based Policies Look Like
to Prevent Overdiagnosis and Underdiagnosis and Most Effectively
Cope with ADHD? 173
Focusing On: The Future 175

RESOURCES 177
INDEX 181
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to Oxford University Press for recognizing

that ADHD merits a place in the What Everyone Needs to Know®
lexicon. In particular, we deeply appreciate the support and
guidance of our editor, Sarah Harrington, and the enthusiastic
efforts of Andrea Zekus regarding all aspects of publishing
this book. Katherine Belendiuk and Elizabeth Owens gave us
excellent suggestions from their careful reading of the text.
Steve gives perennial thanks to Kelly Campbell and sons
Jeff Hinshaw, John Neukomm, and Evan Hinshaw for their
support and love.
Katherine thanks Jack Epstein, as always, and sons Joey and
Josh Epstein.
 INTRODUCTION

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) seems

to be everywhere these days. In recent years, the number
of diagnoses has skyrocketed. More than 6.4 million US
youth—amounting to one in nine children between the ages
of 4 and 17—have now at some point in their lives received
a diagnosis of ADHD, according to a major national survey
of parents. That’s a 41 percent increase in the numbers of such
diagnoses in less than a decade. The disorder has recently
become the second most frequent diagnosis of a chronic con-
dition for children, after asthma.
Newspapers, TV, and blogs provide constant coverage of
the apparent epidemic. Few classrooms lack one, two, or more
diagnosed students. Nor is ADHD merely for kids: Adults
with the disorder are now showing up at medical clinics in
record numbers.
ADHD provokes fierce controversies—as much as if not
more than any other mental condition. Critics go so far as to
deny it exists, disparaging it as an excuse for anything from
bad parenting, lazy kids, and stifling schools to a society intol-
erant of individual differences. People are fiercely divided
over the practice of treating its symptoms with powerful
stimulant medications. Some skeptics even portray ADHD as
a lucrative conspiracy between psychiatrists and pharmaceuti-
cal companies. Defenders counter by pointing to the disorder’s
xvi Introduction

well-established biological roots and to prodigious research

clearly revealing that untreated ADHD often devastates lives.
Ambiguity adds to the general confusion. Although ADHD
is most often a serious impairment, in some cases it may be a
source of strength. As is the case with other forms of mental
disorder, from depression to schizophrenia and from anxiety
disorders to autism, scientists today know a great deal about
the causes, mechanisms, and potential treatments for ADHD,
but to date have no objective way to diagnose it.
In the meantime, ADHD has become a hallmark of our
data-swamped and increasingly competitive era. Since the
dawn of the Information Age, children and adults alike have
been struggling to navigate a rising deluge of information and
choices that challenge our slow-evolving brains. Students are
being educated in classrooms that on average are growing
more crowded, more diverse, and more pressured to achieve,
ever earlier and ever faster. All of these relentless changes in
our society and economy have made distraction, forgetfulness,
and impulsivity—all classic symptoms of ADHD—common
complaints.
There's widespread concern, particularly among parents,
about whether ADHD unfairly stigmatizes boys. Although
boys and girls alike may be impaired by the disorder, boys
are much more likely to be diagnosed at an early age, as their
symptoms are often more disruptive at home and in the class-
room. At this writing, one in five American boys has received
the diagnosis by the time they surpass elementary school.
And even as this alarming statistic suggests that some clini-
cians may be too quick to diagnose boys, many girls who need
treatment are slipping under the radar—as are boys who are
more distracted than hyperactive—risking serious long-term
harm to both their mental and physical health.
By far, however, the keenest controversies concerning
ADHD have to do with the common practice of treating the
condition with powerful pharmaceutical stimulants. Nearly
4 million US children—roughly 70 percent of those currently
 Introduction xvii

diagnosed—now receive such medication. Despite gov-

ernment approval and doctors’ assurances that the drugs
are safe and effective in curbing serious distraction and
impulse-control problems, many people worry about the effi-
cacy of such treatment and whether the medications might be
harming young minds. More broadly, many fear that as a cul-
ture, we’re grasping for quick fixes to address vexingly com-
plex social problems.
As we’ve only fairly recently come to understand, adults
as well as children are grappling with the consequences
of ADHD. Just a few decades ago, scientists presumed that
ADHD symptoms ceased at puberty. Yet researchers and cli-
nicians have since documented that even though much of the
fidgeting and hyperactivity diminishes by the teen years, other
ADHD symptoms (particularly inattention and poor organi-
zation) persist into adulthood in half or more of all childhood
cases. Today, scientists estimate that nearly 10 million adults
meet the criteria for the disorder, with rates of adult diagno-
sis rapidly increasing. As increasing numbers of adults find
their way into treatment, they’ve become a large new market
for medication. Young and middle-aged women have become
the fastest-growing market for such prescriptions.
We predict that, for the next few years, the numbers of
both young and adult Americans diagnosed with ADHD will
keep rising. The reasons for this trend are varied, but one of
the most important factors is the continuing increase in both
awareness and acceptance of the disorder. Moreover, for the
last quarter-century, an ADHD diagnosis has provided a ticket
for accommodations and special services in school. It can also
garner payments from Medicaid and other health insurance
programs. As a general rule, when conditions are explicitly
linked to services and funding, their rates of diagnosis will
often rise beyond their actual prevalence.
Another major reason for the climb in ADHD rates lies in
the increased pressures throughout our society for ever greater
performance in classrooms, offices, and factories—and such
xviii Introduction

pressures certainly aren’t going away anytime soon. More fuel

for the rise in rates comes from doctors who are diagnosing
ever-younger children. Key professional groups, such as the
American Academy of Pediatrics, now urge that diagnosis and
treatment begin as early as age 4, in order to head off the risk
of years of failure. Meanwhile, early childhood education is
gaining in both popularity and public funding throughout the
United States, leading to increased demands on many more
youngsters to control their behavior in school settings.
On the other hand, the current rates of increase can’t con-
tinue indefinitely. We foresee that rising concern about over-
diagnosis and abuse of ADHD medications will eventually
lead to more rigorous diagnostic procedures and an eventual
downturn in the rates. It's just not likely to occur anytime soon.
Whereas once ADHD was considered a mostly American
phenomenon, awareness, diagnosis, and treatment have been
growing in other nations. Increasingly, children are being diag-
nosed in every nation with compulsory schooling, at rates that
are surprisingly similar throughout the world. International
rates of medication for ADHD are also starting to approach
those in our country, causing similar controversies, although
America remains the clear leader of this trend.
While critics raise alarms about the risks of medication, we’re
learning more and more about the enormous costs to taxpay-
ers of untreated ADHD. Beyond the direct costs of treatment
and of special education programs in school, Americans end
up paying hundreds of billions of dollars every year in indi-
rect expenses for juvenile justice programs, substance-abuse
management, expenses connected to accidents, and the huge
toll of low work productivity for adults. Added to this finan-
cial burden is the more intimate pain involved in personal and
family hardships, including the high rates of academic failure,
rejection by peers, joblessness, unfulfilled lives, and divorce
that have been linked to ADHD.
Both the biological roots and often devastating impacts of
ADHD have been established throughout decades of research
 Introduction xix

and supported with tens of thousands of peer-reviewed, pub-

lished studies. Some of America’s leading scientific research-
ers have dedicated their careers to investigating the basic brain
mechanisms governing attention, self-control, and organiza-
tional ability, as well as optimal treatment strategies and the
mechanisms that underlie their success. Even so, American
opinion remains sharply divided—and, all too often, misin-
formed and confused—over the nature of ADHD and the rea-
sons for this seeming epidemic.
Several valid questions have emerged that demand
thoughtful answers. Do the escalating numbers of children
diagnosed with attention problems point to broader problems
with an educational system that demands that children sit
still for hour after hour as they cram for standardized tests?
Has the label at least in some cases become a ruse by which
parents (or college students, or employees) can game the sys-
tem for accommodations? Are all these new prescriptions
encouraging drug abuse, including the use of ADHD medica-
tions as study aids by college and even high school students
who don’t have the disorder but who are desperate for any
kind of edge?
These justified concerns, together with the ignorance and
skepticism, add to the burden of stigma shouldered by peo-
ple who have the disorder. All mental disorders incur shame
and discrimination, but the questions over the authenticity
of ADHD too often lead to blaming those who pursue help.
Medication is often viewed as a crutch, a chemical band-aid
attempting to cover family conflict, poor school performance,
or more general social problems. The result is that many
individuals and families who genuinely need help have not
pursued it.
In other words, in many cases ADHD is being underdiag-
nosed and undertreated, as people are persuaded by critics or
scared off by the controversies. Some avoid getting a diagno-
sis altogether, while others turn instead to what we call the
“ADHD industrial complex,” a maze of aggressively touted
xx Introduction

but unregulated supplements, special schools, and counsel-

ing, where it’s easy to waste money and precious time.
Simultaneously, ADHD is surely being overdiagnosed in a
growing number of cases, in part due to the increasing avail-
ability of government benefits. These changes have resulted
in greater numbers of poor children than ever before being
diagnosed with this disorder—helpfully for some but not so
helpfully for others. Moreover, as life in the new millennium
becomes ever more competitive, many Americans, includ-
ing people in the workforce and many students, are seek-
ing to gain advantage in pills that promise greater focus
and less need for sleep. Many, including worried parents
and unscrupulous adults, are willing to fudge symptoms in
order to obtain a diagnosis; even more are able to buy the
pills illegally.
Fueling the overdiagnoses are the quick-and-dirty ADHD
assessments all too often made by nonspecialists, in office
visits lasting fewer than 15 minutes. Even the most respect-
able professionals, who are trained to provide accurate diag-
nostic workups, may find themselves rushing through the
process due to a lack of adequate reimbursement. To the
extent that the medical establishment and our society in gen-
eral fail to take ADHD evaluation more seriously, we’ll all be
paying the price.
All this explains why, in the following pages, we aim to
transcend the polarization surrounding too many discussions
of ADHD and provide straight talk and sound guidelines for
educators, policymakers, health professionals, parents, and the
general public. This book will include an explanation of the
core symptoms of ADHD, its biological origins and dynam-
ics, and its varying rates among males and females, various
ethnic groups, and between US states and internationally.
We’ll detail some of the most exciting recent scientific break-
throughs about the nature of ADHD, explaining how both
children and adults are affected by the disorder and how the
 Introduction xxi

nature of ADHD changes as people’s brains develop. You’ll

learn how school policies and other pressures for performance
are fueling today’s fast-rising rates of diagnoses. We’ll also pro-
vide a guide to intervention strategies, including medications
and psychosocial therapies as well as practical information
about how parents and teachers can help children struggling
with the disorder. We'll tell you how to choose a professional
who can advise you on a sound plan for assessment and treat-
ment. At the same time, we’ll emphasize throughout these
pages that any consideration of ADHD must take into account
both underlying biology and sociocultural forces. Rather than
either-or, the issues are both-and.
ADHD: What Everyone Needs to Know is the product of a col-
laboration between University of California psychology pro-
fessor Stephen Hinshaw, an international expert on ADHD
and mental health in general, and Katherine Ellison, a Pulitzer
Prize–winning journalist and author who in recent years has
focused on writing and speaking publicly about ADHD. Both
of us bring powerful personal as well as professional expe-
rience to this task. Hinshaw, who grew up with a brilliant
father who suffered severe but misdiagnosed mental illness,
has dedicated his career to understanding the combination of
biological, family-related, and school-linked factors related to
childhood mental health and its treatment and has published
extensively in this field. His most recent book, coauthored
with his colleague Richard Scheffler, is The ADHD Explosion:
Myths, Medication, Money, and Today’s Push for Performance.
Ellison, who was herself diagnosed with ADHD as an adult
and has a son with the disorder, has devoted the past decade
to investigating and writing about ADHD, other learning
disorders, neuroscience advances, and education policy. She
is the author, among other works, of Buzz: A Year of Paying
Attention.
To help with your own focus as you read along, we summa-
rize each chapter at its conclusion, in sections titled “Focusing
xxii Introduction

On. …” We also ask you to keep in mind these general, key

points:

• A diagnosis of ADHD marks the starting point for

an educational journey—some might call it a forced
march—that above all requires an open mind. Despite
all that scientists now understand about the genetic and
biological origins of mental disorders, these ailments
emerge in the context of early life experiences and remain
much more difficult to define and cure than organ fail-
ures, injuries, and infectious diseases. Separating fact
from fiction about ADHD is no easy task, given the
unusual controversies and misinformation surrounding
the disorder.
• Mental disorders rarely occur in isolation—rather,
they are typically accompanied by comorbidities, a
fancy name for related maladies. Serious comorbid
conditions that can result from or coexist with ADHD
include anxiety, depression, and oppositional behavior,
as well as learning disorders and Tourette syndrome. As
children grow older, other problems may also emerge
and coexist with ADHD, most commonly substance
abuse, eating disorders, and self-injurious behavior.
These add-on problems may eventually overshadow the
core problem of ADHD, requiring considerable attention
and additional treatments.
• In the world of ADHD, biology meets context head-on.
Although there’s no doubt about the biological origins
of ADHD, the nature and severity of the symptoms
unfold in interactions within families, classrooms, and
peer groups. Certain symptoms may yield considerable
impairment in certain families, schools, and jobs, but
not so much in others. Thus, we must always take into
account not just the individual’s underlying biochemistry
but also his or her upbringing, social relationships, occu-
pation, and the level of support received in school or on
the job.
 Introduction xxiii

• No discussion of ADHD can ignore the role of school

policies and pressures. This is especially true given that
ADHD symptoms typically become problematic during
the first years of schooling, when demands for attention,
self-control, and academic performance multiply.
• Finally, saying that someone “is ADHD” rather than
“has been diagnosed with ADHD” is a grossly mis-
leading, meat-cleaver way of reducing a person to
a highly variable facet of his or her personality. In
other words, go ahead and label the condition, but don’t
label the person. We don’t call individuals “autistics”
or “schizophrenics” or “manic depressives” any longer,
for good reason: In order to genuinely empathize with
people who deal with the consequences of mental disor-
ders, we need to separate the person from the condition.
One of our greatest hopes for this book and for both of
our related professional endeavors is to reveal the many
ways our society stigmatizes mental illness, includ-
ing subtle jokes, lowered expectations, discriminatory
policies and—often most harmfully—the tendency for
people who are labeled as mentally ill to believe in these
stereotypes, despair, and stop trying. Having ADHD is
hard enough; going without support can make it impos-
sible to bear.

Together with the other titles in the What Everyone Needs to

Know® series, this book is intended to be a concise guide rather
than an encyclopedia. More exhaustive coverage of many
specific aspects of ADHD appears in some of the resources
listed at the end of the volume. Our aim is to provide you with
an overview of the most authoritative and up-to-date scien-
tific knowledge available, with reminders of the potential for
human suffering or hope involved at each step of the way.
 PART I
FACING THE FACTS
 1
WHAT IS ADHD? AND WHY
SHOULD WE CARE?

In a Nutshell, What is ADHD?

ADHD, the acronym for attention deficit hyperactivity disor-
der, is a neurodevelopmental problem that can result in distrac-
tion, forgetfulness, impulsivity, and in some cases excessive,
restless physical movement, from fidgeting to pacing.
That said, ADHD doesn’t comfortably fit in a nutshell. It is
a complicated condition of variable origins and dynamics that
can show up in markedly different ways from person to per-
son and throughout a person’s lifetime. One basic rule, how-
ever, is that ADHD typically emerges in childhood, although
in some people—many of them girls—it may escape recogni-
tion and diagnosis until their teens or even adulthood.
ADHD is not so much a problem of uniformly poor atten-
tion or fidgetiness as it is of poorly regulated attention and
action. The behavior of people with ADHD varies, sometimes
dramatically, over the course of an hour, a day, and a school
year (or work year). Indeed, many individuals with ADHD can
focus extremely intensely—even obsessively (a phenomenon
known as “hyperfocus”)—when they’re intrinsically inter-
ested in what they’re doing.
Like depression, anxiety, other mental illnesses, and even
high blood pressure, ADHD is a spectrum disorder. You can
have some of the symptoms at low or moderate degrees of
severity and not qualify for a diagnosis. Most if not all of us
4 ADHD

are at least occasionally prone to being distracted, restless,

and impulsive, particularly if we’re tired or overly stressed.
It’s only when the symptoms reach a critical mass, producing
impairment in more than one context—for example, both at
home and at school—that a diagnosis is warranted. In a world
of ramped-up pressures within classrooms and offices, where
consistency of self-control is at a premium, this disorder can
become a major handicap.

What are the Core Symptoms?

The most common and problematic symptoms of ADHD are
forgetfulness, distractibility, lack of focus, restlessness, and
impulsivity. More than other people, children and adults with
ADHD often have trouble keeping track of directions and con-
versations. They procrastinate instead of finishing work that
doesn’t interest them and often end up with rushed, messy
final products that don’t reflect their creators’ skills and tal-
ents. They forget where they put their homework, sunglasses,
and keys. (At the end of each school year, parents of students
with the disorder often discover overdue homework, buried
in backpacks, from months before.) They may often feel impa-
tient and be easily bored, and can seem careless, and unin-
tentionally (usually) rude. People with ADHD often ignore
risks that are obvious to others and wittingly or unwittingly
defy social norms. They may interrupt someone who’s talking,
impulsively pick the first response on a multiple-choice test,
and blow out the candles at other children’s birthday parties.
The problems characteristic of ADHD fall into two groups,
the first being symptoms of inattention and disorganization
and the second involving hyperactivity and impulsivity. The
former group of symptoms can make it seem that individu-
als with ADHD don’t really care what others are saying or
doing, yet the problem is more likely that they’re failing to
follow the thread of the conversation—a particularly serious
issue when it comes to directions given by teachers or bosses.
 What Is ADHD? And Why Should We Care? 5

The latter group of behaviors can make people with ADHD

seem self-centered, reckless, and frenetic. But as we highlight
in later chapters, these behaviors related to distraction, sen-
sation-seeking, and excessive movement may actually reflect
various means of staving off boredom and compensating for
a brain that values immediate gratification rather than a more
judicious focus on long-term benefits.
Clinicians refer to three types—or “presentations”—of
ADHD: the inattentive form, which makes it hard for people
to sustain focus and ignore distractions; the hyperactive/impul-
sive variant, in which people experience chronic restlessness
and problems in inhibiting impulses; and the combined type,
in which, just as it sounds, there’s a combination of both kinds
of symptoms. Scientists studying ADHD believe that a major-
ity of people who have the disorder have the inattentive form.
Most who get diagnosed, however, have the combined form.
That’s because visibly hyperactive children and adults stand
out more and are often more annoying than spacey day-
dreamers. It’s much more likely in their cases that a teacher,
parent, spouse, or boss will notice the problem and encour-
age the person to get help. (Typically, only very young chil-
dren, mostly preschoolers, are diagnosed with the purely
hyperactive-impulsive variety. As they grow up and are
obliged to pay closer attention to tasks in school, they nor-
mally end up diagnosed with a combination of inattention and
impulsivity.)
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM, the American
mental health profession’s official guidebook (see more about
the DSM in Chapter 4), lists typical symptoms of the inatten-
tive variety of ADHD as distractibility and forgetfulness, mak-
ing careless mistakes, and having trouble sustaining focus,
including when trying to listen to instructions, finish tasks,
and organize materials. People with this subset of symptoms
also tend to avoid tasks that take a lot of work and to forget
where they put things. The hyperactive/impulsive subset
includes such symptoms as excessive fidgeting and tapping,
6 ADHD

trouble staying seated, running around (or, for adults, having

a restless mind), talking excessively, blurting out answers, and
having difficulty waiting one’s turn.
For young children (preschoolers up through the early
elementary grades), the core problems are typically related
to overactivity and defiance toward parents and teachers,
compared with other children their age. By the middle of
grade school, children with the disorder often have diffi-
culty listening to teachers and following their increasingly
complex directions. It’s at this age, additionally, that conflicts
with peers multiply. In secondary school, when students are
first obliged to switch between classes and teachers dur-
ing the day, children with ADHD may be handicapped by
their disorganization. For those individuals with ADHD
who make it to college, the intense academic demands can
be overwhelming. By adulthood, difficulties in managing
requirements on the job and close relationships often come
to the fore.
Scientists have found that people with ADHD struggle in
particular with two essential types of cognitive skills: work-
ing memory and other executive functions. Working memory is
a vitally important skill that we use all the time. It involves
holding two or more things in your mind at once—things as
basic as where you’re going and how to get there. Poor work-
ing memory is why many children with ADHD can’t seem to
follow multistep directions, such as a teacher’s instruction to
“Open your history books, turn to page 38, and read the first
three paragraphs.” A working memory deficit can flummox
you during the simplest tasks of daily life, such as trying to
figure out why you opened the refrigerator door or keeping
track of a conversation. Poor working memory is a strong pre-
dictor of academic failure and a major threat to self-esteem.
Executive functions refer to a broader and more sophisti-
cated set of skills, no less crucial to getting along in the world,
including the ability to think ahead, plan, organize, strategize,
 What Is ADHD? And Why Should We Care? 7

correct errors, and recognize and act on the feelings of oth-

ers. Deficits in executive functions help explain why children
and adults alike who are diagnosed with ADHD have so many
social problems and troubles managing their lives. They may
forget to show up at appointments or arrive late, fail to keep
track of birthdays or other important events in the lives of their
closest friends and relations, surrender to their strong tempta-
tion to receive immediate rewards, and struggle to pay their
bills on time and finish projects. Life without hardy executive
functions can be chaotic.
Intriguingly, some people who qualify for a diagnosis
of ADHD do not experience significant problems in either
working memory or other executive functions. Their inatten-
tive and impulsive behaviors appear to have a different set
of brain-based underpinnings, which may have to do more
with motivational deficits or early brain disruption due to
prenatal complications. They are impatient and impulsive
but not because of fundamental problems related to execu-
tive functioning. The lesson here is that ADHD is not a single
entity: There are several pathways, beginning before birth and
early in life and involving different brain regions, that can lead
to similar groups of core symptoms and their impairments. (In
Chapter 3 we more specifically discuss the causes and dynam-
ics of this complex condition.)
In short, ADHD is defined by patterns of behavior that are far
beyond the norm for individuals of a given age range, patterns
that betray a forgetful, sometimes reckless, apparently thought-
less, and most often disorganized and erratic style. These behav-
ior patterns are not universally counterproductive; as we’ll later
explain, a subset of people who meet criteria for ADHD are
unusually innovative and creative. Unfortunately, however, it’s
more common that people with severe ADHD symptoms have
serious difficulty adjusting to the demands of daily life, ending
up with a track record marked by repeated failures, seriously
challenged relationships, and battered self-image.
8 ADHD

Is ADHD Best Considered a Deficit of Attention? Or is the

More Basic Problem a Lack of Self-Control?
Ever since 1980, the name for this complex syndrome has
included the phrase “attention deficit,” yet that phrase only
begins to describe the problems that can be involved. For one
thing, there are different forms of attention, including sus-
tained attention over long time periods and selective attention,
involving where we choose to focus our mind’s spotlight.
People with ADHD may vary in which kinds of attention defi-
cits affect them the most.
What’s more, some experts contend that by focusing our
attention on attention, we might be overlooking the potentially
more serious handicap of lack of self-control, otherwise known
as willpower, self-discipline, or the ability to delay gratifica-
tion. Abundant research over the past several decades has con-
firmed the importance of this basic skill not only in avoiding
life-long disappointments but also in achieving success.
The pivotal study along these lines was the famous “marsh-
mallow test,” designed in the early 1960s by Walter Mischel,
a psychologist now at Columbia University. Mischel and his
colleagues gave a group of preschoolers an option: They could
enjoy one marshmallow (or other favorite treat) right away,
but if they managed to wait for 15 minutes, while a researcher
left the room, they could have two. In follow-up studies, the
researchers found that children who were able to defer gratifi-
cation and wait for the double reward had better life outcomes
well into adulthood, including higher SAT scores, greater
academic achievement, and, not surprisingly, lower rates of
obesity.
Mischel and his colleagues proposed that for every child or
adult attempting to delay instant gratification (with anything
from a marshmallow, a cigarette, or a shopping spree), a con-
flict exists between the brain’s opposing tendencies toward
impulsivity and restraint. As we pursue long-term goals, we
all must find a way to let our cooler heads prevail, suppressing
 What Is ADHD? And Why Should We Care? 9

our most impulsive instincts in favor of good judgment. People

who manage to do this consistently tend to lead safer, happier,
healthier, and more successful lives.
It’s clear that many people with ADHD have a harder time
than others controlling their impulses, which gets them into
well-documented trouble including but not limited to prob-
lems with friendships, traffic accidents, drug abuse, gambling,
and marital conflict. That’s why some experts, chief among
them the psychologist Russell Barkley, a major ADHD inves-
tigator and theorist, contend that the core problem with the
disorder is less one of attention than of successful control of
impulses. As he explains, when people lack the ability to con-
trol or inhibit their responses, they never even get a chance to
deploy essential executive functions, such as working mem-
ory and long-term planning. Instead, they’re at the mercy of
whatever responses were previously rewarded. Thus, in his
view, people with primary problems of attention and focus
(i.e., those with the inattentive form of ADHD) have a funda-
mentally different condition than do those whose most serious
problem is impulsivity.
Yet another perspective on the core problem with ADHD
comes from the pioneering work of psychiatrist Nora Volkow,
director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Volkow con-
tends that ADHD boils down to a deficit of motivation, or as
she calls it, an “interest disorder.” She bases this on brain-scan
findings (which we detail in Chapter 3) revealing that at least
some people with ADHD may be underaroused physiologi-
cally, which helps explain why they are chronically drawn to
the neural boost of an immediate reward and less willing to
do the long-term work necessary to develop important skills.
The paradigm of a sleepy ADHD brain also sheds light on why
so many people with the disorder are restless and fidgety, as
the constant activity may be part of a struggle to stay alert.
Some experts use this model to explain why many people with
ADHD can be so annoying: They may be teasing, provoking,
10 ADHD

and demanding, specifically to get a rise out of others, as con-

flicts can be energizing.
Another deficit area pertains to the tendency for people
with ADHD to have problems with time management and
organizational skills. They may grossly underestimate the
time needed to complete a task, leaving their final perfor-
mance far short of their intentions and talents. They may
also show up late to many meetings, appointments, and even
their own children’s performances, contributing to percep-
tions that they’re unreliable, insensitive, and uncaring. They
may complete their work but lose it or forget to turn it in,
making them seem irresponsible, when they’re actually try-
ing their best.
See what we mean when we call ADHD complicated? You
can try to define it in a nutshell, but it takes time to understand
the nature of the underlying problems linked to ADHD, which
not only vary dramatically between people diagnosed with it
but also affect those people differently in different environ-
ments and over the course of a single day or year.

Aren’t the Symptoms So Often Attributed to ADHD Simply

Typical Characteristics of Being a Young Child
(Especially a Boy)?
This can be a vexing question. Certainly, hyperactive and
impulsive behaviors are legion in toddlers and preschoolers.
It takes many years for young humans to obtain a modicum
of self-control, as they become socialized and as their brains
mature. Scientists have only fairly recently learned that the
brain’s frontal regions, crucial for self-regulation and executive
functions, do not reach full maturity until about age 25. This
raises a reasonable concern over whether we’re pathologizing
childhood itself, and especially boyhood, as boys’ brains are
generally slower to develop than those of girls.
In this way, ADHD presents quite a different case than
autism. The symptoms characteristic of that disorder, including
 What Is ADHD? And Why Should We Care? 11

an infant’s resistance to being held or establishing eye con-

tact, a toddler’s slowness to pick up language, and a slightly
older youth’s obsessive focus on quirky interests, tend to stand
out as developmentally abnormal. The sheer ordinariness of
ADHD-related behavior patterns makes diagnosing ADHD
trickier but no less essential. As we describe in Chapter 4, a
qualified psychologist or psychiatrist or well-trained pediatri-
cian should be able to tell the difference between the typical
characteristics of childhood and the extreme and potentially
impairing symptoms of ADHD—but only if he or she follows
evidence-based guidelines for thorough evaluations.

What’s the Difference Between ADHD and ADD?

The short answer is: none. ADHD, or attention deficit hyper-
activity disorder, is a relatively new name (as of 1987) for what
used to be called ADD, attention deficit disorder.
Now for a bit of background. Many people are confused
over this issue, and for good reason. ADHD has had more than
half a dozen names in the century over which clinicians have
been diagnosing it, a history we’ll detail below. It wasn’t until
a paradigm shift in 1980 that clinicians began to focus on focus
(or more specifically, on problems with focus). At that time, the
disorder was renamed attention deficit disorder (ADD).
This new name reflected a more compassionate view of the
interior lives of the children who were affected, a perspective
originally proposed by the Canadian psychologist Virginia
Douglas. In the early 1960s, Douglas began working with seri-
ously distracted children at an outpatient clinic at the Montreal
Children’s Hospital. She was drawn in particular to the boys
who couldn’t seem to control their impulses, rushing through
their schoolwork, making careless mistakes, cursing, fighting,
and running through the halls. Douglas gradually developed
a theory that the impulsive behavior was rooted in a problem
in sustaining attention—a view that would ultimately contrib-
ute to the major expansion of the number of children eligible
12 ADHD

for diagnosis and treatment through the 1980s. At that time,

ADD became a blanket term that incorporated both the inat-
tentive and hyperactive-impulsive forms of the disorder.
But in 1987, the revised edition of the official handbook
of mental health, the DSM, changed the name once again, to
ADHD, encompassing hyperactivity. Although this remains
the preferred official name, many authors, speakers, and cli-
nicians still use “ADD” to describe the disorder, while oth-
ers use “ADD” to refer specifically to the inattentive form
of ADHD.
We’ll be using ADHD, and recommend that you do, too,
to be precise and correct—but we can’t guarantee that the
name won’t be changed again. Some scientists, in fact, wonder
whether the condition shouldn’t be called an inhibitory deficit
disorder or some other term that might more precisely define
the underlying problem. For now, remember that ADHD refers
to a wide range of underlying deficits and impairments and
not simply distractibility.

What are Some Good Reasons to Take ADHD Seriously?

Longitudinal research, in which children with ADHD are
monitored over many years, provides crucial answers to this
question. The news, after 15, 20, and even 30 years of follow-up,
is not uplifting. People with ADHD, a number of investiga-
tive teams have found, show significantly more struggles
with drugs and alcohol and many more teen pregnancies,
car wrecks, suicide attempts, sexual diseases, and encoun-
ters with police (and even shorter lifespans) than comparable
individuals without ADHD. On average, they also have fewer
close friends, less satisfactory marriages, and more frequent
vague medical complaints. Hinshaw’s team, in particular, has
documented striking impairments specific to girls and young
women with ADHD, which we will discuss later in this book.
 What Is ADHD? And Why Should We Care? 13

Focusing On: The Nature of ADHD

ADHD is a surprisingly common behavioral disorder, with
core symptoms involving distraction, difficulty in sustain-
ing focus, impulsivity, and in some cases restlessness and
hyperactivity. Whereas it ranges in severity depending on
the individual, the time of day, and the demands involved, it
can become a serious disability in many situations, especially
including traditional school environments or jobs that pri-
oritize the capacity to sit still for long periods of time and to
juggle tasks. ADHD is not a new condition: Serious distraction
and poor self-control have existed throughout human history.
Yet US rates of the disorder have skyrocketed in recent years,
at least in part because of our continuing push for academic
and job performance.
 2
HOW WIDESPREAD IS IT?

How Prevalent is ADHD in the United States Today, for

Both Children and Adults?
Before we answer this question, let’s be clear about the differ-
ence between a condition’s actual prevalence and its diagnosed
prevalence. Prevalence of ADHD is just what it sounds like: the
proportion of people who truly have the disorder, relative to
the total population. Diagnosed prevalence, in contrast, refers to
the percentage receiving a diagnosis from a clinician, whether
or not that diagnosis is entirely accurate.
True prevalence is relatively easy to ascertain for medical
illnesses that can be detected through specific biological tests,
such as HIV—as long as the researchers sample the general
population and not just people arriving at clinics. Yet with
mental disorders, estimating both the prevalence and diag-
nosed prevalence is a tricky task, given the lack of objective
markers and consequent risks of both underreporting and
overreporting. Underreporting may be due, for instance,
to fear of stigma by a potential patient (or his or her family)
and to a lack of qualified medical professionals to diagnose
the condition. Overreporting, in contrast, may occur due to
cursory diagnoses, rising pressures for achievement, and the
chance that people are seeking to gain an advantage from pre-
scribed medications.
16 ADHD

As we explain at length in this book, many factors influence

who gets diagnosed and who doesn’t, meaning that diagnosed
prevalence may be an imperfect barometer of true preva-
lence for ADHD. Increases in rates of diagnosis may instead
reflect medical or societal changes—from increasing aware-
ness about the disorder to government policies that encourage
people to seek valuable accommodations. We hope you’ll keep
these issues in mind as you consider the following statistics.
As we mentioned in the Introduction, approximately 11 per-
cent of all US children aged 4–17 have at some point received
an ADHD diagnosis, according to the most recent available
survey by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC), covering 2011–2012. This figure translates to approxi-
mately 6.4 million US children and adolescents. As for adults,
no comparable formal estimates are available, in part due to
the historic consensus that ADHD was mostly a childhood
disorder. Yet today, clinicians and privately commissioned
surveys report that adults are the quickest-growing segment
of the population receiving diagnoses and being prescribed
medication, with the number of adult women surging espe-
cially fast. Researchers estimate that half or more of children
diagnosed with ADHD will continue to have significant and
impairing symptoms as adults, from which we can deduce
that just more than 5 percent of adults are affected. This works
out to be approximately 10 million US adults.

How Fast Have US Rates of ADHD Been Increasing, and Why?

The quick answer is really fast. We mentioned in the Introduction
that the rate of ADHD diagnoses has risen by more than 41
percent over the past decade. A bit of recent history will help
place this surprising news in context.
The rate of diagnoses of the disorder now known as ADHD
picked up in earnest during the 1960s. A landmark of that
era was that the psychostimulant methylphenidate, mar-
keted under brand names including Ritalin (and, since 2000,
 How Widespread Is It? 17

Concerta), was first approved in 1961 for children suffering

from the disorder now known as ADHD. The demand for
diagnoses increased appreciably once parents realized there
was a seemingly simple treatment that could help their rest-
less children focus in school.
At that time, scientists estimated that about 1 percent of
children had been diagnosed with ADHD, even though there
were no reliable national surveys to check the accuracy of
that claim. More certain are the increases in the rate of diag-
nosis over the next couple of decades. The reasons were var-
ied, including the introduction of new diagnostic terms—first
ADD in 1980 and then ADHD in 1987—that carried with them
new and more expansive criteria. Another boost in the rate of
diagnosis came with the emergence of the first community
support groups, including what later became Children and
Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder (CHADD), a vigorous
national lobbyist. We’ll tell you more about CHADD and simi-
lar groups in Chapter 6, but the upshot is that they not only
effectively helped spread awareness about ADHD but also
catalyzed some major policy changes in the early 1990s.
One such innovation was the 1991 reauthorization of the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the federal
government’s special education law, initially passed in 1975.
After its reauthorization, IDEA included ADHD as a specific
diagnosis that could qualify a child for special services and
accommodations. At roughly the same time, Medicaid cover-
age was expanded to include a greater number of childhood
conditions, including behavioral disorders such as ADHD. The
Supreme Court also ruled that Supplemental Security Income
(SSI) payments should include individuals with ADHD (so
long as the ADHD is severe and the patient shows documented
impairments in cognition or communication and social and
personal functioning). Because, in part, of these incentives, by
the mid-1990s, ADHD was becoming a much more popular
diagnosis, with estimates that more than 5 percent of US chil-
dren and adolescents had received diagnoses.
18 ADHD

Within a few more years, millions of Americans were using

the Internet to find information and could learn about ADHD
in the privacy of their homes. Another important change in
the late 1990s was the advent of enticing direct-to-consumer
ads for ADHD medications (as well as many other medical
and psychiatric pills) in magazines, on television, and via the
Web. It’s reasonable to assume that many parents, looking at
the glossy photographs of cheerful children obediently doing
their homework, were persuaded to take their irritable, dis-
tracted offspring in to see if they might qualify for a diagnosis.
As we’ll explain in detail later, a critically important devel-
opment that helped boost the national rates of ADHD came
with state policies in the 1990s that made funding for schools
dependent on a district’s test scores. In 2001, President George
W. Bush signed into law the federal No Child Left Behind Law,
which extended this practice to those states that had not previ-
ously enacted such legislation.
Yet another reason for the rising rates of diagnoses is bet-
ter reporting. At the turn of twenty-first century, the CDC
first began tracking behavioral and neurodevelopmental
conditions such as ADHD and autism-spectrum disorders.
Questions were added to the National Survey of Children’s
Health, a large, periodic national survey of nearly 100,000 rep-
resentative families throughout the United States. These ques-
tions included whether a doctor or other healthcare provider
had ever told the parent that the child in question had been
diagnosed with ADHD—and, if so, whether the child was
being treated with medication.
The first survey including these questions was performed
in 2003. At that time the overall percentage of youth aged 4–17
who had ever received a diagnosis was 7.8 percent. Four years
later, in 2007, the percentage had jumped to 9.5 percent. By
the third survey, in 2011–2012, the figure had risen again, to
11.0 percent: one in nine youth across this wide age span. As
noted in the Introduction, this figure represents an increase
of 41 percent in the 9-year period. Even more shocking, for
 How Widespread Is It? 19

boys who had reached adolescence, 20 percent had received a

diagnosis—one in five.
These figures reflect parental reports of diagnoses, which
are, as noted above, rates of diagnosed prevalence as opposed
to true prevalence. Our educated guess is that despite some
underdiagnosis (especially in girls), ADHD is now likely as
a general rule to be overdiagnosed in many segments of the
population, largely linked to cursory diagnostic procedures
in many locales. Thus, we believe that the national diagnosed
prevalence in the United States has by now outstripped the
true prevalence.
As we highlight in later chapters, what’s remarkable is not
just the overall rise but the variation across states and regions.
The South and Midwest regions of America have much higher
rates of ADHD diagnosis than does the Pacific Coast region,
creating an intriguing puzzle. At the same time, the rates of
ADHD diagnosis have been rapidly rising in many parts of the
developed world outside our borders. We address these ques-
tions later on in this chapter.

Do the Rising Rates of ADHD have Anything in Common with the

Similarly Rising Rates of Autism?
In recent years, diagnoses of autism-spectrum disorders
have been escalating at even faster rates than for ADHD. One
immediate explanation is that rates of autism diagnosis have
historically been quite low. They were still below one-tenth
of 1 percent of the population of children and adolescents as
recently as the early 1990s, when rates of ADHD were thought
to be 3–5 percent of the population. With such initially low
rates, any increases in assigning diagnoses naturally appears
particularly large.
The rising rates of autism and ADHD do have a few things
in common. One is that the official diagnostic criteria for both
conditions have been loosened in recent years, making it eas-
ier to qualify for a diagnosis. Awareness of both conditions
20 ADHD

has also grown substantially. Another relatively recent change

is that both diagnostic labels have enabled families to obtain
services for their children. Policy changes governing both
education and health insurance—for example, California now
requires coverage of behavior therapy for autism—have made
obtaining an autism diagnosis increasingly valuable, particu-
larly if a child is struggling academically or socially.
There are also some reasons to suggest that the true preva-
lence (and not just the diagnoses) of these two disorders has
grown. We elaborate on these in the next chapter, but they
include increasing exposure to toxic chemicals and also an
increasing number of babies surviving premature births and
low birthweights. It is also possible, particularly in the case
of ADHD, that the rapid increase in the numbers of young
children in day care could explain some part of the increase
in diagnosed prevalence, given the growing numbers of over-
stressed children in such facilities and the greater numbers of
teachers able to observe young children’s behavior patterns in
these settings.

Is this Disorder Something New or Has it Always Been Around

in Some Form?
For millennia, doctors, philosophers, scientists, poets, and
novelists have studied and commented on a variation of tem-
perament that makes some people more impulsive, bold, and
distracted than the rest of us. This variability has been vari-
ously interpreted as a physical defect, a moral failing, a family
curse, or some ungainly combination of all three.
In ancient Greece, impulsive behavior was thought to be
caused by an excess of red blood, treated with leeches. Yet it
wasn’t until the Age of Enlightenment, roughly 2,200 years
later, that a Scottish physician, Sir Alexander Crichton, wrote
about “morbid alterations of attention” characterized by
extreme mental restlessness and distraction, which could
 How Widespread Is It? 21

become evident early in life or occur as the result of an illness,

and which tended to sabotage a child’s education.
Crichton described one feature of this condition as “the
incapacity of attending with a necessary degree of constancy
to any one object,” which certainly sounds familiar as one
of the diagnostic indicators of ADHD. He also wrote of an
extreme state of reactivity to stimuli such as barking dogs or
other sudden noises, a restlessness that patients with the con-
dition called “the fidgets.” Crichton went on to observe that the
symptoms tended to diminish with age—as, centuries later,
research showed they indeed do in as many as half of those
with the disorder. Research has also confirmed that the most
observable symptoms of overactivity tend to go underground
by adolescence and beyond, whereas lack of organization and
focus and mental restlessness are more likely to persist.
In the Victorian Age, through the mid-nineteenth century,
the pioneering American psychologist William James built
on Crichton’s observations when he detailed his perspec-
tive on the links between attention, distraction, and immoral
behavior—to the point of criminality—even as he doubted
that much could be done to help people with problems in
those domains.
Others disagreed, however, and over the course of the next
several decades, the phenomenon we now know as ADHD
took clearer shape, as a long line of doctors and scholars in
Europe and the United States sought ways to help seriously
distracted children. At the turn of the twentieth century, one
of these pioneers, the British physician George Still, embarked
on a groundbreaking series of lectures in which he defined
the cluster of behaviors that today often accompany a diag-
nosis of ADHD. Still described a group of his young patients
who shared what he called a major “defect in moral control.”
They were, as he said, not only inattentive but overactive,
accident-prone, aggressive, defiant, sometimes cruel and dis-
honest, and strikingly insensitive to punishment.
22 ADHD

In a soon-to-be classic portrait of a typical boy with the

symptoms later known to belong to ADHD, the German physi-
cian Heinrich Hoffman wrote a bit of verse that was published
in the medical journal The Lancet in 1904, describing naughty
“Fidgety Phil,” who:

… won’t sit still;

He wriggles,
And giggles,
And then, I declare,
Swings backwards and forwards,
And tilts up his chair. …
Till his chair falls over quite,
Philip screams with all his might …

As George Still noted, the defiant behavior patterns he

observed typically arose before the age of 8 and were more
common in boys than in girls. They were also particularly com-
mon in families that included alcoholics and criminals—one
of the first hints of a genetic explanation.
The search was on for a smoking gun. In the ensuing
decades, investigators would seek clues to the roots of seri-
ous distraction with surveys, X-rays, EEGs, brain scans, clini-
cal interviews, and genetic testing. Type in “attention deficit”
today on PubMed, the leading Internet archive of medical
journals and reports, and you’ll find close to 30,000 papers
published between 1966 and 2014, with more than two-thirds
of these published between 2004 and 2014 alone.
Popular awareness of the powerful link between physical
and mental health substantially increased for the first time in
the World War I years, when the great encephalitis pandemic
claimed at least 60 million lives throughout the world. Doctors
were intrigued to find that many of the survivors experienced
problems with attention and impulsivity. As they soon dis-
covered, a pathogen was affecting the brain, in addition to
other organs, and changing behavior. This first clear evidence
 How Widespread Is It? 23

linking biology and behavior was a precursor to our mod-

ern understanding of ADHD as linked to genes and prenatal
influences, rather than upbringing or innate morality, a topic
we more thoroughly discuss in the next chapter.
Reasoning backward, the early twentieth-century clini-
cians began to hypothesize that if these same behavior pat-
terns were displayed in a given child or adolescent, there must
be some underlying brain pathology—even if it were unde-
tectable. This assumption led to the description of children
with ADHD as suffering from “postencephalitic behavior
disorder” and, later, “minimal brain damage,” with the latter
phrase subsequently softened to “minimal brain dysfunction”
(MBD). These terms remained in common use in scientific lit-
erature and clinics for the next several decades.
By the 1950s, understanding of ADHD had developed
sufficiently for scientists to become more precise in their
language. Minimal brain dysfunction could encompass
a long list of symptoms—including depression, delayed
speech, and bed-wetting—that have little or nothing to do
with the classic syndrome of distraction. Experts therefore
tried out new phrases, such as “hyperkinetic impulse dis-
order”—and, in the late 1960s, “hyperkinetic reaction of
childhood.” “Hyperactivity” became the shorthand clini-
cal label. In 1980, as we’ve explained, the term was further
refined, to ADD.
As we’ll elaborate later, it’s intriguing to consider that the
first major surge of interest and understanding of ADHD,
along with more scrupulous identification of children who
had the disorder, took place in the late nineteenth century, just
as compulsory school was becoming the norm in developed
nations. For the first time in history, the vast majority of chil-
dren had to sit still and pay attention for sustained periods
throughout a school day, taxing many of them beyond their
capacity. It’s a safe bet, therefore, that mandatory education
was the first significant force that suggested the true preva-
lence of ADHD in children.
24 ADHD

Focusing On: Prevalence

ADHD in some form has doubtless existed from the dawn of
human history. Yet scientific and medical interest in it really
took off at the dawn of compulsory mass education, beginning
around the middle of the nineteenth century. There was some-
thing about kids having to sit in classrooms most of the day,
behaving themselves and maintaining self-control, that made
the extra-inattentive and extra-restless ones stand out. In fact,
this was really the first time that outside observers—namely,
teachers—got a chance to compare the behaviors of large
groups of unrelated children. Today, approximately 11 per-
cent of all US youth aged 4–17 have at some point received an
ADHD diagnosis, according to the most recent available sur-
vey by the CDC, covering 2011–2012. This translates to approx-
imately 6.4 million US children and adolescents. The estimates
are less authoritative after age 17, but researchers believe that
there may be around 10 million adults with the disorder in the
United States.
 3
WHAT CAUSES IT?

What is the Most Common Cause of ADHD?

(Spoiler Alert: It Runs in Families)
ADHD can be caused by one or more of several different factors
that we’ll list and explain in this chapter. But by far the single
most common way to get it is from your ancestors. We know
this from a large and still growing number of studies on twins
and adopted children that have helped scientists disentangle
the role of genes versus environments. Given that 100 percent
heritability means that genes alone are responsible for differ-
ences between people with respect to a certain symptom, trait,
or disorder, these studies have revealed that the basic symp-
toms of ADHD are approximately 75 percent heritable.
In other words, the main reason that some people are
extremely attentive, some are completely distracted, and
most are somewhere in the middle of the bell curve owes to
genetic rather than environmental factors. This figure is lower
than that for the heritability for height (which is about 90 per-
cent) but more than for major depression (30–40 percent) and
schizophrenia (60 percent), and nearly equal to the rate for
bipolar disorder and autism (more than 80 percent), two of the
psychiatric conditions with the highest genetic liability known
to science.
26 ADHD

Another way of conveying the genetic contribution to

ADHD is as follows: among children with ADHD, 40 percent
or more of their biological parents will also show significant
symptoms, regardless of whether the parents have also been
diagnosed. As we discuss in a later section of this chapter, this
substantially adds to the difficulties that parents may have in
managing offspring with ADHD, given that the parents them-
selves may be dealing with their own problems of disorgani-
zation and emotional overreactivity.
Heritability isn’t a simple concept. Despite the high level
of genetic influence involved in ADHD, there is no single
gene that causes the disorder, as is also true for all other men-
tal disorders and for nearly all complex physical diseases.
As many as 50, 100, or more gene variations, or alleles, may
contribute to ADHD by influencing the way the brain cre-
ates and responds to important chemical messengers asso-
ciated with attention and motivation. We’ll tell you more
about these chemicals, known as neurotransmitters, later on,
when we discuss what’s going on in the brains of people with
ADHD. But simply consider this landmark finding: scientists
relatively recently discovered that a gene variation known as
DRD4-7, commonly found in people diagnosed with ADHD,
contributes to a lower rate of brain receptors for a key neu-
rotransmitter called dopamine. The presence of this allele
correlates with an unusual propensity to seek excitement and
novelty, whereby people are prone to take risks that others
typically avoid.
An important way to think about this is that if your brain
does a poor job of processing dopamine, you’re likely to be
chronically sleepy-minded (the clinical term is “under-
aroused”)—fidgeting to stay alert or feeling a need to engage
in high-risk behaviors to avoid the irritability and anxiety con-
nected with boredom. This pattern helps explain why stimulant
medications and therapies that aim to change behavior with a
system of rewards can be successful in treating ADHD: They
help supply some of the missing fuel for motivation.
 What Causes It? 27

Recent research has shown that some of the genes that raise
the risk for ADHD are the same genes that raise the risk for
autism, even though the two disorders manifest themselves
quite differently. This intriguing finding shows us that there
aren’t necessarily specific genes for specific mental disorders but
rather that certain genes sculpt the brain’s development, which
in turn is affected by other genes and by early environments to
yield different kinds behavioral and emotional conditions.
We’ll tell you more about such gene-environment interplay
later on in this chapter, when we discuss the influence of par-
ents and schools. For now, keep in mind that even for traits and
behavior patterns with high heritability, changes in the environ-
ment over time can make such traits and behaviors more or less
pronounced. Height is a good example. People today on average
are several inches taller than their great-grandparents, but this
is not because the genes for height have mutated over a few gen-
erations. Rather, changes in our diets over the last century have
altered the influence of genes, or as scientists say, gene expression.
It may be the same with ADHD. Even though the disorder is
highly heritable, relatively recent and quite dramatic changes
in our modern environment—including the unrelenting flood
of information from personal computers and cellphones and
increasing societal pressures to multitask and perform ever
faster and earlier—may be making most of us less attentive
and more impulsive (and fast-tasking) than ever before. Still,
genes make the key difference in determining which of us, in
the midst of this changing information climate, will lie at the
extremes of the curve. We like to put it this way: People with
ADHD are our era’s coal-mine canaries, more sensitive than
most other individuals to shifting pressures for attention and
achievement that may ultimately affect nearly everyone.

What Other Factors Might Cause ADHD?

Beyond genes, difficulties before or during birth, or during
early childhood, can result in ADHD symptoms. Included
28 ADHD

here is the exposure of a fetus to heavy metals, alcohol, nico-

tine, and toxic chemicals as well as other prenatal risks that
can lead to lower-than-normal birth weight. All of these can
contribute to the basic symptoms of inattention, impulsive-
ness, and, in some instances, hyperactivity.
Several studies have linked fetal or childhood exposure to
lead, even at very low levels, with cognitive and behavioral
deficits that resemble those of ADHD. Similarly, a pregnant
woman’s excessive consumption of alcohol can produce what
are called fetal alcohol “effects,” including classic ADHD
symptoms of inattention, impulsivity, hyperactivity, learning
problems, and sometimes aggression. (More extreme alcohol
consumption can cause fetal alcohol syndrome, with acute
damage to an infant’s brain that may result in intellectual
disabilities as well as noticeable facial abnormalities.) There’s
also evidence that a pregnant woman’s smoking and even
second-hand smoke around a baby or child can lead to ADHD
symptoms.
In recent years, scientists have expressed concern about the
dangers to young brains stemming from even low-level expo-
sure to toxic chemicals that have become increasingly common
in our environment. Chief among these is a class of organic
compounds known as organophosphates, which are used in
pesticides, fertilizers, herbicides, and solvents, with residue
left on much of our food. Although this field of study is still in
its infancy, researchers have found clear links between early
exposure to organophosphates and later symptoms of inat-
tention and hyperactivity in addition to some symptoms of
autism.
Researchers have found similar links between ADHD-like
symptoms and exposure to phthalates and bisphenol A,
chemicals found in a wide range of everyday plastic products
including baby bottles, sippy cups, pacifiers, and teething
rings. Bisphenol A is used in hard plastic items, like the baby
bottles, whereas phthalates make plastic soft and flexible, for
items such as shower curtains, cosmetics, and many medical
 What Causes It? 29

devices. Both chemicals can leach from plastic into liquid

and food, especially when items are heated or used for long
periods of time. Both are also known to be endocrine disrup-
tors, affecting thyroid functioning and hormones, with vari-
ous harmful effects. The European Union has banned some
of these chemicals, and some US industries are trying to end
their use of them, but the US federal government has yet to
step in, and the chemicals are so common that it could take
many years for private efforts to replace them.
Another major concern is exposure to lead, as we’ve
mentioned—for example, from the paint in homes built
before 1978 or from leaded gasoline—and mercury, increas-
ingly found in several species of fish. Both of these substances
have been linked to brain damage including problems resem-
bling ADHD. It’s possible that children who begin life with
certain genetic vulnerabilities may be extra-susceptible to
the influence of such toxic chemicals, a pattern exemplifying
gene-environment interaction, whereby the harm from an envi-
ronmental exposure depends on the presence of a vulnerable
genotype. Once again, it’s clear that genes and environments
are not separate in predisposing individuals to ADHD. Rather,
they nearly always work together.
Moving down the list, being born prematurely, and espe-
cially at a lower-than-normal weight, is another risk fac-
tor for ADHD symptoms, as it also is for learning disorders,
Tourette syndrome, and even cerebral palsy. Low-birthweight
babies often suffer bleeding into brain regions associated with
learning, motor behavior, and attention. Thanks to increas-
ingly sophisticated neonatal intensive care, many more
low-birthweight babies than ever before are now surviving.
The unfortunate corollary is that this progress may be con-
tributing, at least in part, to the rising rates of ADHD (not just
diagnosed prevalence).
The moral of all these stories is to remind you that ADHD is
a multifaceted syndrome with no single cause. Different devel-
opmental pathways may lead to the same basic symptoms. In
30 ADHD

some of the most severe cases, there may be combinations of

genetic risk and exposure to the toxic substances noted above.

What’s Going on Inside the Brains of People with ADHD that

Causes the Symptoms?
Scientists have gathered evidence supporting several kinds
of differences in the brains of people diagnosed with ADHD.
You can think of them as belonging to one or more of three
groups: chemical, structural, and functional. The bottom line
is they’re all biological, in contrast to the unfounded popular
opinion that views ADHD as stemming from bad moral char-
acter and/or poor parenting.
Starting with the chemicals: The key word here is dopa-
mine, a much-celebrated neurotransmitter underlying atten-
tion and motivation. Like other chemical messengers in the
brain, dopamine carries electrical signals across synapses,
the gaps between brain cells (neurons). Whenever this
micro-transportation system flags, the brain can’t function
optimally.
Dopamine is one of a few different neurotransmitters
implicated in ADHD. Another is norepinephrine, also known
as noradrenaline, which plays a major role in impulse con-
trol. Dopamine, in contrast, is crucial for alertness, focus, and
sensitivity to rewards. It might be thought of as the brain’s
elixir of excitement, awakening interest by drawing us to
novelty (good or bad), such as a new sort of berry on a tree,
a snake in the grass, or a check in the mail. Dopamine is the
core neurotransmitter in only a few of the brain’s major path-
ways, but these are directly relevant to motivation, effort,
and self-regulation.
Too much dopamine can make you psychotic, while too
little can literally immobilize you, as with the victims of
Parkinson’s disease. In recent years, scientists have learned
that brains of people with ADHD have a major problem with
this vital chemical. They either make too little of it, have
 What Causes It? 31

fewer receptors for it, or use it less efficiently. Nora Volkow’s

brain-scan-based research at the National Institute on
Drug Abuse has documented that the brains of carefully
diagnosed adults with ADHD contain significantly fewer
receptors for dopamine in precisely those neural pathways
relevant for registering reward or maintaining focus and
attention. Volkow found this to be true even though the
subjects had never taken medication, which means that
the findings can’t be attributed to any stimulant-related
effects on dopamine receptors. Her conclusion, shared by
other leading experts in the field today, is that for at least
some individuals with ADHD, there’s an inborn dopamine
deficiency.
Moving on to larger-scale structural differences, devel-
opmental neuroscientists have made some startling recent
discoveries, including that important brain structures in
people with ADHD are on average smaller than those of their
counterparts.
Over the course of several years, Philip Shaw and his team
at the National Institute of Mental Health have performed
a series of periodic brain scans of children with ADHD
and a control group. The scans focused in particular on the
cortex—the brain’s outermost layer, densely packed with
neurons—and even more specifically the part of the cortex
covering the frontal lobes. Lying just behind the forehead
and toward the top of the head, the frontal lobes are known
to play a major role in self-control and a host of executive
functions.
During normal development, the frontal cortex reaches a
maximum thickness at around age 6. But in the sample of over
200 children with ADHD, the maximum was not achieved
until age 9 or later, signaling a 3-year developmental gap in the
brains of children with clear attention deficits and impulsivity.
Even after childhood, the brains of the diagnosed youth con-
tinued to lag behind those of the control group during adoles-
cence, when the cortex typically thins. Shaw and his team also
32 ADHD

found a link between the degree of cortical thickening and the

severity of ADHD symptoms in the diagnosed sample.
In light of these findings, it shouldn’t be so surprising that
many 11-year-olds with ADHD behave more like 8-year-olds.
Decades ago, clinicians often referred to children with ADHD
symptoms as being immature. The new science proves them
right, in a sense: They have slower-maturing brains.
Do the brains of people with ADHD ever catch up to those of
their peers? At this writing that question remains unanswered.
Some brain-scan studies suggest that on average the overall
brain volume of people with ADHD, both children and adults,
is somewhat lower than in typically developing individuals.
Added to chemical and structural differences that can lead
to ADHD symptoms are the functional, or dynamic ones.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analyzes pat-
terns of blood flow, revealing which parts of the brain are
being activated during performance of various cognitive tasks.
Many investigations using this technology have shown that
activation patterns in pathways between the frontal lobes and
deeper structures involved in learning and self-regulation are
particularly inefficient in individuals with ADHD when the
participants are engaged in tests of working memory, atten-
tion, or other aspects of cognition. It’s as though the brains of
people with ADHD don’t function as smoothly or efficiently as
those of normally developing individuals.
Another kind of research takes a different tack, analyz-
ing the brain’s tendencies when individuals are at rest or just
daydreaming. Intriguingly, the brain shows distinct patterns
of activation and organization during such down time. It now
appears that this “resting state” brain activity of people with
ADHD intrudes on their task performance when attention and
concentration are really needed. In other words, there’s now
neural evidence that people with ADHD may need to work
extra hard to prevent an underaroused brain from taking over
when focused work is required.
 What Causes It? 33

How Much Influence Do Parents Have, if Any—And

in What Ways?
Throughout this book, we hope to impress on you that ADHD
symptoms, along with most if not all other human behaviors,
arise and take shape due to a combination of nature and nur-
ture, biology and environment, innate traits and changing
context. All of these dynamics mold a person’s personality and
behavior throughout a lifetime, creating vicious or virtuous
circles. Another spoiler alert: Although ADHD always begins
with biology, a parent’s behavior can matter quite a bit.
In 1998, Judith Rich Harris published a much-discussed
book entitled The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out
the Way They Do. Most controversially, she argued that parents
have little significant impact on their children and that genes
and peers far outweigh them in influence. Some of her argu-
ments are in fact worthwhile. Developmental psychology dur-
ing much of the twentieth century overattributed childhood
behavior to the influence of parents. Yet considerable evidence
suggests that Harris’s main claim is greatly exaggerated.
Parents and other caretakers indisputably matter a lot and in
some key ways that we are only beginning to fathom.
Consider the extreme example of the children born in
Eastern European orphanages during the 1980s, many of
whom, due to horrific neglect, grew up deprived of all but
minimal social contact. They ended up, not surprisingly, with
serious problems in relating to others as well as with severely
compromised cognitive and language ability. Many also had
ADHD-like symptoms including acute difficulties with sus-
taining attention and self-control. In other words, beyond
the usual genetic and biological risks, an extremely deprived
social environment appears to be one of the many triggers for
ADHD behavior.
It’s important not to read too much into this rare case. It’s
a common misperception that what psychologists call inse-
cure attachment, which refers to babies’ patterns of failing to
34 ADHD

form a secure bond with caregivers, causes ADHD. Problems

with attachment do often result in aggression and sometimes
depression, but not in ADHD symptoms per se, except, as
noted, in cases of utter deprivation. Thus, the isolated example
of the Eastern European orphans does little to bolster the pop-
ular but wrong belief that bad parenting causes ADHD.
At the same time, it’s certainly true that skillful parenting
can make a great difference in the lives of children with bio-
logical risk for ADHD. Researchers have found the gold stan-
dard to be “authoritative” parenting, which blends warmth
with clear limits and strong guidance toward independence.
(A style encompassing too many limits and too little warmth
is branded “authoritarian” parenting, while warmth with-
out clear limits is “permissive.”) The value of a parent’s love
can’t be discounted when considering a child's mental health.
One study of twins with low birthweights found a direct cor-
relation between a mother’s affectionate behavior toward her
babies and the later development of ADHD symptoms: Greater
warmth was associated with lower symptom levels. This find-
ing appears to offer further confirmation of a classic 2004 study
on rats, in which McGill University scientist Michael Meany
found that the degree to which a mother rat licks and grooms
her pups will determine whether certain genes in the pups’
brains are turned on or off. As adults, the better-nurtured rats
appear to be less fearful and release less of the stress hormone
cortisol when startled. Surely, the behavior of both human
mothers and fathers toward their babies, children, and teens
has many impacts we are only beginning to understand.
Hinshaw’s own research has found that boys with ADHD
whose primary caregivers deployed high levels of authorita-
tive parenting, that skillful combo of warmth and limits that
the ADHD expert Edward Hallowell calls “super-parenting,”
showed the highest levels of social competence during sum-
mer camp programs. Testing a similar hypothesis, the promi-
nent psychologist Michael Posner, at the University of Oregon,
has shown that cold, dictatorial, “authoritarian” parents
 What Causes It? 35

increase the odds that children born with the DRD4-7 allele,
the gene variation linked to risk-taking, will develop a diffi-
cult temperament, possibly combined with problems in execu-
tive functions. Once again, this result and others like it suggest
that certain genes may become activated (or “expressed”) only
or mostly within certain environments—demonstrating the
complex ways in which genes and environments are closely
intertwined.
To cite just one more example of this general rule, Susan
Campbell of the University of Pittsburgh carefully assessed
preschool children with early signs of ADHD as rated by
parents and preschool teachers and found that parents who
responded with negativity and harshness to their children’s
behavior tended to exacerbate their children’s symptoms—not
only right away but over many years. It’s worth emphasizing
that the parents didn’t create those symptoms, the origins of
which were undoubtedly related to genes and temperament,
but appeared to be pouring gas on a developing fire.
It’s now time to introduce a bit more complexity. Consider
the fact that a child born to be impulsive—to run around the
grocery store, knock things over, drop an iPhone in the toilet,
pull the cat’s tail, steal a sibling’s diary, and inspire weekly if
not daily irate calls from his or her school—is not an easy child
to raise. What makes all of that exponentially harder, and a
sure-fire recipe for family chaos, is that, given the strongly
hereditary nature of ADHD, one or both of that child’s par-
ents may be struggling with the same disorder or at least with
many similar symptoms. People with ADHD, adults and chil-
dren alike, are often so impulsive that they unintentionally
violate others’ personal boundaries, betray confidences, and
react emotionally. None of these actions is conducive to calm
parenting or domestic peace. Moreover, a parent distracted
and frazzled by unpaid bills, unmet deadlines, and an unclean
kitchen is not mentally well equipped to provide authoritative
parenting. Such parents tend to struggle and fail to remain
calm and set clear, firm limits, resulting in the worsening of
36 ADHD

their children’s behavior. Seriously distracted parents may

also not be the best medical advocates for their kids, given that
this task usually requires wending one’s way through a com-
plicated medical system and making sure the children regu-
larly take whatever medications are prescribed.
In short, it’s important to keep in mind that children influ-
ence their parents as much as (or even more than) vice versa.
Psychologists once assumed, for instance, that intrusive, con-
trolling mothers were making their children hyperactive.
Then scientists found that when those kids with ADHD took
stimulants, improving their behavior, the moms nagged less.
The nagging, in other words, was a reaction to and not a cause
of the children’s behavior. (On the other hand, the child’s med-
ication did not substantially increase the parents’ use of more
positive practices, suggesting strongly that additional treat-
ment in behavior management should complement medica-
tion, as we address in Chapter 8.)
In another illuminating study, researchers went so far as to
temporarily switch mothers of children with aggressive con-
duct disorder with mothers of more typical kids. In no time,
the previously calm moms of the “normal” youth were pester-
ing and criticizing, at the same time that the original naggers
had calmed down. Moreover, in recent research from England,
performed with adoptive families—that is, in which parents
and children do not share genes—it was found that children
with ADHD symptoms provoked hostile parenting, and that
in turn, such hostile treatment increased the risk and severity
of later ADHD-related symptoms. It’s all more evidence that
beyond the role of biology in explaining ADHD, parent-child
interaction and reciprocal influences are also very much
at play.
The common pattern is that a young child with a diffi-
cult temperament can frustrate an otherwise mild-mannered
adult, leading to emotional reactions from the parent that, in
turn, lead to worse behavior from the child. And, in the case
of ADHD, such difficult temperament can appear even in the
 What Causes It? 37

first year or two of life, setting off a chain of reactions and

counterreactions that can last a lifetime. The child’s extraor-
dinary resistance and defiance may lead the parent either to
back off entirely or to resort to harsh punishment—or some-
times both, in alternating cycles—making the child even more
angry and aggressive.
If left unaddressed, these effects can play off each other
and multiply. For instance, the rebellious child’s teachers and
friends may increasingly brand him or her as a troublemaker,
reinforcing the kid’s worst instincts. Such potentially escalat-
ing risks make it all the more important for parents of chil-
dren with ADHD to make sure they acknowledge and treat
any mental and emotional problems of their own that may be
compromising their ability to help their offspring.

What Role Do Schools and Academic Pressures Play in

Today’s High Rates of ADHD?
One of our mantras is that ADHD, along with other vari-
abilities of behavior, is a condition that stems both from indi-
viduals and the contexts surrounding them. It’s particularly
striking to consider that the earliest clinical accounts of behav-
iors linked to ADHD coincided with the advent of compulsory
education in the Western world. In the United States, begin-
ning in the second half of the nineteenth century, the major-
ity of the nation’s children for the first time had to participate
daily in classrooms, sit still for hours at a time, and do things
that human brains had never evolved to do until that point,
such as learn to read (reading is a relatively recent addition
to the human repertoire, dating back only a few thousand
years—and for most of that period, only for children of the
elite).
The early “common schools” of the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries were designed to resemble factories, in
which children were the passive recipients of a rigid cur-
riculum. Conformity, organization, and tolerance for rote
38 ADHD

memorization became prized behaviors, as they continue to be

in many of today’s public schools, particularly as teachers are
besieged by pressures to teach to standardized tests. What’s
more, then, as well as now, the expectation has been that chil-
dren in grades K–12 will become competent generalists. The
problem is that such environments can be downright hell-
ish for children who struggle with sustaining attention and
self-control, and who do best when they are able to discover
a niche of learning that holds their attention. Easily bored, to
the point of painful anxiety and, all too often, misbehavior,
they are routinely labeled as “bad kids,” both punished and
rejected.
Making matters still worse has been the steady average
national decline in available time for recess, lunch, physical
education, and art and music classes, mostly due to budget
shortfalls and pressure on teachers to prepare students for
standardized tests. There’s a lot less time for kids to get out
of their chairs, move around, and refresh their brains, which,
naturally, is hardest on kids whose brains are underaroused
from the start.
Given all this, it probably shouldn’t be surprising that
one-third or more of US children with ADHD drop out of
high school, often sabotaging their chances for well-paid and
interesting jobs. Life may get easier in college, if they manage
to get there, given the greater freedom to choose classes and
schedules. Nonetheless, the challenges of college life are acute
for many students with ADHD. Many college students have
trouble organizing their lives independently for the first time,
but those with ADHD can truly flounder, particularly when
lacking special support.

What Do People with ADHD Need to Know about Video Games,

Social Media, and Other Forms of Screen Entertainment?
Video games offer players intense, often relentless action, dra-
matic stories, the thrill of competition, constant rewards, and
 What Causes It? 39

feedback tailored directly to recent performance—in other

words, precisely the types of stimuli that the ADHD brain
craves and rarely gets in mundane everyday life.
Parents of ADHD gamers reasonably worry when their kids
start demanding to spend hour after hour in front of a screen.
Our strong advice is to not waste time worrying but instead to
take firm action, limiting screen time from an early age. Your
child doesn’t need to have a TV set or Xbox in his or her room,
or unlimited use of a smartphone by the time he or she gets
to middle school. Such choices, in fact, can do considerable
damage.
For many children, video games, television, and other
forms of screen time become so enticing that they can easily
interfere with social life, school, or work. In fact, some research
has found that dopamine levels at least double when people
play rewarding video games. Because kids with ADHD are so
much more drawn to these rewarding distractions, they’re at
special risk of losing out on important experiences, including
friendships, sports, music, and job experience. Furthermore,
some researchers have found evidence that although the sur-
feit of screen time doesn’t cause ADHD, it can aggravate the
symptoms. A team of researchers at Iowa State University who
surveyed 1,323 children aged 8 to 11, and 210 young adults,
mostly between 18 and 24, found that attention problems
increased as did the number of hours playing video games.
The same was true for hours watching TV. In fact, children
who exceeded the 2 hours of daily screen time recommended
by the American Academy of Pediatrics were more likely to
have attention problems.
Young children are particularly vulnerable. In 2011,
researchers measured the performance of 4-year-olds on cog-
nitive tasks after showing some of them 9-minute clips of a
fast-paced cartoon from SpongeBob SquarePants. Other chil-
dren either watched a slower-paced show or didn’t watch
TV at all. As it turned out, the children who watched the
fast-paced cartoon were more impatient and had more trouble
40 ADHD

following directions, revealing a temporary dip in their execu-

tive functions.
The trouble with this and other studies showing similar
links is that researchers so far haven’t been able to answer the
real-world, chicken-and-egg question of whether the symp-
toms of ADHD lead to more screen time or more screen time
leads to higher levels of ADHD. In either case, however, it’s not
great news for screen devotees.
Some research strongly suggests that overindulging in
video games is a predominantly male problem. Psychologist
Anatol Tolchinsky at Eastern Michigan University performed
a study of 216 college students, both men and women, who
had ADHD symptoms ranging from mild to severe and who
played video games at least once a week. Researchers found
that the men had higher rates of “problematic” screen time
(i.e., time devoted to games interfered with hygiene, sleep,
school, and relationships) than the women. The main problem
in these cases seemed to be the young men’s poor time man-
agement skills. Some of the subjects simply didn’t realize how
many hours they had spent on the games. Women in the study
not only reported fewer game-related problems but logged
half as many hours per week playing the games as their male
classmates.
A widespread concern among parents of children both with
and without ADHD is the content of the electronic behavior,
particularly the violent nature of such explicit videogames as
“Grand Theft Auto” or “Call of Duty.” In 1974, when screen
violence was a faint shadow of what it is today, the consen-
sus (including a unanimous Scientific Advisory Committee
report) indicated that televised violence has an adverse effect.
Ever since then, however, opposing sides have warred over
this issue. Those who think the concerns are exaggerated have
contended that in the same years that violence in the media
has increased, rates of male violence throughout America have
steadily declined, strongly suggesting that media exposure
can’t be causing the aggressive behavior. In 1999, the federal
 What Causes It? 41

government backed away from its earlier statement, citing

problems with the research.
More recent studies, however, have offered more support to
those who worry over the impact of violent media. Although
one major study in 2010 found that neither video game vio-
lence nor TV violence predicted serious acts of youth aggres-
sion or violence, particularly including the series of school
shootings that have horrified the nation, systematic, careful
reviews of the accumulated evidence have indeed linked ran-
dom exposure of youth to violent as opposed to nonviolent
media with short-term increases in aggressive behavior and
decreases in empathy and helpful behavior. Furthermore, lon-
gitudinal studies have shown that children with initially high
aggression are attracted to more violent forms of media, and
that this exposure appears to increase their initial propensity
for violence.
Returning to the issue of screen-time and ADHD symptoms,
one certain cause for concern is the impact of electronic media
on sleep. In June of 2012, the American Medical Association
warned that exposure to excessive light at night, including
light emitted by screens, “can disrupt sleep or exacerbate sleep
disorders, especially in children and adolescents.” Although
any light at night can be disruptive, the “blue light” produced
from smartphones and computers is particularly harmful in
this regard, as it has been shown to suppress melatonin, a hor-
mone that helps regulate sleep. Again, parents of children with
ADHD, who already may be having trouble sleeping, should
have firm rules about electronics in the bedroom or risk hav-
ing symptoms worsened by a sleep disorder. We’ll talk more
about the link between poor sleep and ADHD in Chapter 4.

Focusing On: Causes

ADHD is more often than not the result of genes, but the
story doesn’t end there. Exposure to toxic substances, includ-
ing lead, mercury, pesticides, plastic additives, alcohol, and
42 ADHD

tobacco, can create or aggravate ADHD-like symptoms. The

symptoms arise due to brain dynamics that can include prob-
lems with important neurochemicals, primarily dopamine
and norepinephrine, that help maintain alertness, sustained
attention, and impulse control. The brains of children with
ADHD are also structurally and dynamically different from
those of their peers, specifically including delays in matura-
tion of the frontal cortex. ADHD is primarily a problem of biol-
ogy, but context is also crucial. The behavior of parents and
other caretakers can make a big difference in the emergence
and severity of symptoms, as researchers have found, and the
behavior of children with ADHD will vary greatly depend-
ing on whether they are bored or challenged, making school
environments hugely influential as well. Finally, ADHD is
not caused by excessive time exposed to computers, TV, and
smartphones, but there are indications that overdoing “screen
time” can disrupt sleep, which may worsen symptoms, and
also, if the content is violent, spark aggression.
 4
HOW DO YOU KNOW IF
YOU HAVE IT?

Under What Circumstances Should Your Child, Your Partner—Or

You Yourself—Be Evaluated for ADHD?
Many core ADHD symptoms, particularly hyperactivity and
impulsivity, first appear during the preschool years. Yet except
in extreme cases, when the child is at risk of being expelled
or is physically dangerous, it’s usually not until grade school
that ADHD symptoms will lead to assessment and treatment.
Most often, a parent will consider bringing the child for an
evaluation after one or more teachers has complained about
classroom problems such as tuning out, acting up, or fail-
ing to work up to the youth’s potential. For children with the
purely inattentive variety of ADHD, problems can take lon-
ger to emerge but typically show up by middle school, when
demands on students substantially increase, requiring more
sustained focus and organization as well as the ability to keep
track of multiple teachers in a changing daily schedule. For
adults with ADHD symptoms, the impetus to seek a diagnosis
may come from a loved one, spouse, or employer who values
the relationship but is frustrated by behavior that can include
poor listening skills, chronic lateness, messiness, failure to
keep up with bills and household chores, emotional reactiv-
ity, and general unreliability. When additional disorders (e.g.,
44 ADHD

substance abuse, aggressive behavior, and impairing anxiety)

emerge, it’s obviously even more important to seek help.
All symptoms of ADHD may be common in the general pop-
ulation on an occasional basis and especially during or after
a stressful event. It’s the frequency, intensity, duration, and
impairing nature of such behaviors that tip the scales toward
considering a formal evaluation. Along the way, it’s a good
idea for the parents of children who may have ADHD—or the
adult and his or her partners—to talk with other experienced
families or individuals, to attend meetings of support groups,
and to educate themselves as much as possible.

Who is Most Likely to Diagnose ADHD?

All licensed physicians and mental health professionals are
technically qualified to diagnose ADHD. Currently, the major-
ity of US children are diagnosed by their pediatricians, which
we consider a discouraging state of affairs, given that most
pediatricians aren’t sufficiently trained in mental illness in
general and ADHD in particular. Moreover, although pedia-
tricians are authorized to prescribe medication, and many
do, few are expert in calculating optimal dosage levels and
monitoring effectiveness—and even fewer are well-informed
about behavioral, school, and family-based interventions.
Many pediatricians are aware of these limitations but end
up conducting evaluations anyway, due to the serious
national shortage of child and adolescent psychiatrists and
developmental-behavioral pediatricians—professionals who
have received specific training in behavioral and emotional
problems of youth. On the other hand, clinical child psycholo-
gists can be a good option for diagnosis; they outnumber child
and adolescent psychiatrists and developmental-behavioral
pediatricians and, if well trained, can offer a wide range of
psychosocial treatments following a thorough evaluation.
Adults may be more likely to turn to a specialist, such as
a psychologist or psychiatrist with expertise in ADHD. Yet
 How Do You Know If You Have It? 45

many adults also rely on their general practitioners, who can

provide prescriptions for ADHD medication—but all too
often, again, without specialty training or the time to provide
a careful diagnostic workup.

How Should ADHD be Diagnosed?

Although the precise numbers are not known, the unfor-
tunate reality is that too many evaluations of people
suspected of having ADHD take place in a clinical appoint-
ment lasting fewer than 10 or 15 minutes. In such cases, a
doctor—usually a pediatrician or internist—might ask
general questions and listen to family complaints, perhaps
even going through a list of ADHD symptoms in cursory
fashion. Such a doctor may diagnose someone with ADHD
and prescribe medication then and there. Yet this is hardly
the gold standard for an accurate diagnosis, in which it’s
essential to obtain information from others affected by the
patient’s behavior, such as a child’s teacher or an adult’s
significant other. Experienced clinicians understand that
ADHD-related problems don’t readily show up in a one-on-
one interview or testing situation; rather, they reveal them-
selves most strongly in everyday behavior displayed in the
real world. Moreover, people with ADHD are often inad-
equate witnesses of their own behavior, and may also be in
denial.
The official diagnostic guide, called the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, says a clinician
should conclude that someone has ADHD only if the prob-
lems have been present from an early age (typically emerging
before age 12), are chronic (even though their severity can fluc-
tuate from day to day), are cross-situational (in other words,
present in at least two important settings, such as home and
school or home and the workplace) and are impairing (such
that academics, relationships, job performance, and judgment
are compromised).
46 ADHD

The DSM lists a total of 18 symptoms of ADHD, with nine

each pertaining to the inattentive and hyperactive forms. For
children and youth up through 16 years of age, six of the nine
symptoms of either of these presentations are required for a
diagnosis. After age 17, only five of the nine symptoms within
each domain are necessary.
A thorough clinician will provide parents and patients
with checklists of symptoms, seeking to collect more than
one impression of the individual’s problems in different con-
texts. For children, parents and teachers should fill out the
forms, while for adults, partners and employers are ideal as
an addition to the adult patient’s own self-reporting. The best
checklists allow the diagnostician to compare symptom levels
with those of other people of the same age as the individual in
question.
Some lists are limited to the 18 ADHD symptoms spelled
out in the DSM, but many clinicians use broader checklists
that include questions about anxiety, depression, aggression,
and possibly also autistic symptoms. These lengthier scales
are particularly helpful for an initial evaluation, as they help
rule out other conditions that might resemble ADHD and
also bring to light potential accompanying problems. As we
explain later in this chapter, it’s also important to rule out
issues such as sleep disorders or thyroid dysfunction before
assuming someone has an attention disorder.
Respondents are typically asked to rate each item on a 3- or
4-point scale (with zero signifying “not at all,” 1 “just a little,”
2 “pretty much,” and 3 “very much”). Scores of 2 or 3 are typi-
cally counted as a “yes” for the presence of the symptom.
For evaluations of children, some especially conscientious
doctors will seek ratings from former teachers as well as the
current teacher in order to ascertain patterns of behavior
across the years. A child may well behave much differently
depending on his or her relationship with a particular teacher.
A review of report cards and school records (or for adults, job
evaluations) can yield important information, not only about
 How Do You Know If You Have It? 47

the precise numbers of symptoms but about the kinds of aca-

demic or work situations that are most likely to lead to prob-
lems. Even more helpful—although typically rare, due to time
and cost considerations—are interviews with the teachers
and observations of a child’s behavior during the school day.
It could be the case, for example, that in a particularly disor-
ganized classroom, nearly every student is exhibiting ADHD
symptoms. In another instance, it may be the transitions from
one activity to another or from indoor to outdoor time that
serve as the catalysts for the relevant problems. For inattentive
youth, parents may not see the academic problems their child
is experiencing as readily as teachers (except, perhaps, during
homework).
A high-quality evaluation will include time for the exam-
iner to conduct a detailed review of the patient’s medical and
psychological history. This includes a long interview with a
patient, parent, and ideally someone else closely related to the
patient to construct what’s known as a developmental history.
Such information is needed to understand possibly influential
events during the person’s infancy, toddlerhood, and preschool
years. These may include neglect or abuse, a family’s frequent
moves, medical problems, accidents, and/or delays in speech,
language, and motor skills. When it comes to adults, it’s also
important to determine when the ADHD symptoms began,
given that the symptoms typically emerge in childhood.
We imagine that at this point you may be shaking your head
in disbelief, wondering what kind of doctor or therapist would
ever have this kind of time. Unfortunately, we concur. Most
children and adults receiving ADHD diagnoses today are get-
ting them after extremely brief examinations, which, as we’ve
noted, explains some of the current patterns of overdiagno-
sis and overmedication. We are describing an ideal, although
at minimum we do believe that several hours of a clinician’s
time, including collecting and scoring rating scales, obtaining
a detailed family and developmental history, engaging in dis-
cussion with teachers (or employers), and writing a detailed
48 ADHD

report is needed to ensure accuracy. In complex cases (e.g.,

for those with significant anxiety or aggression), even more
time may be required. When significant learning problems are
involved, additional cognitive and achievement testing may
also be in order, as discussed later in this chapter. How far
from the norm must the symptoms be to make a diagnosis?
Just as with inches of height, points of blood pressure, or
the cardinal features of depression, ADHD symptoms exist on
a continuum. There is no magic place on this bell curve where
the normal range stops and the atypical part of the spectrum
begins. The DSM offers guidelines—namely, that the symp-
toms must have impaired the person in two or more settings
for at least 6 months—suggesting that what’s most impor-
tant is the impairment and not just the number of symptoms.
Researchers have found that when a person’s ADHD symp-
toms are extreme (i.e., in the upper 5 or even 7 percent of the
curve), he or she is likely to be impaired both academically and
socially and needs a diagnosis. Even so, it’s always important
to consider the context. A 7-foot-tall basketball player may be
graceful on the court but awkward getting into a taxi. A doc-
tor with a restless, anxious temperament may feel comfortable
in an emergency room but nowhere else. Again, it’s not just
the severity of the problems but how they influence the indi-
vidual’s performance in crucial aspects of life. How far from
the norm must the symptoms be to make a diagnosis?

Why Do the Symptoms Show Up More Often in School and on

the Job than at Other Times?
We’ve already explained that ADHD is a disorder not just of
attention span and distractibility but of motivation, the latter
encompassing the capacity to be interested in routine tasks
or ones that place high demands on organization and focus.
Because so many people with ADHD have a problem with
processing dopamine, the neurotransmitter governing our
relationship to rewards, they can seem to slack off without
 How Do You Know If You Have It? 49

frequent enticements. When work or school becomes rou-

tine or particularly challenging, or when someone else (e.g.,
a teacher or boss) is calling the shots, people with ADHD
often start fidgeting and daydreaming. Yet when such people
are intrinsically interested in an activity—be it a march to
protest climate change or a few hours playing Grand Theft
Auto—the rules change. Controversies are particularly entic-
ing for many people with ADHD, who are drawn to strong
emotions. So are video games, with their strong reward sys-
tems in the form of noise, flashing lights, and accumulating
points. Yet just because people with ADHD are unusually
drawn to video games doesn’t mean you should assume they
will be naturally skilled at them. The Canadian investiga-
tor Rosemary Tannock has shown that youth with ADHD
actually perform worse than control subjects on those
games, despite their seeming to be extrafocused. The same
information-processing issues that plague schoolwork are
also apparent in this realm.

Is There Any Objective Assessment for ADHD, Such as

a Blood Test or Brain Scan?
The short answers are no and no. For years scientists have
been hotly pursuing a so-called biomarker for ADHD that
would be free of subjective influence, such as measurements of
chemicals in the bloodstream, performance on computerized
attention tasks, or highly detailed pictures from brain scans.
But they haven’t found one yet that clearly indicates which
individuals do or do not have ADHD.
There are some small signs of progress. In 2013, the US
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a test for
ADHD that measures brain waves—the electrical impulses
produced by clusters of neurons—via an electroencepha-
logram (EEG) that uses electrodes attached to a person’s
scalp. There is persuasive evidence that a dominant pat-
tern of slow-frequency theta and beta waves may serve as
50 ADHD

a partial marker for ADHD. Another recent FDA-approved

ADHD diagnostic tool is a computerized test of sustained
attention and impulse control that features an infrared track-
ing device to detect subtle head and body movements dur-
ing the testing. This test was invented by Dr. Martin Teicher,
a psychiatrist based at the prestigious McLean Hospital in
Belmont, Massachusetts, and some insurance companies are
now reimbursing clinicians who employ it. In our opinion,
however, although both of the tests may indeed add to a cli-
nician’s information and improve the accuracy of diagnoses,
neither can serve as worthy substitutes for the kind of thor-
ough assessment we’ve described. In both cases, the devices
measure behavior in only one setting, and for a limited time.
They can’t replicate constantly changing, real-world environ-
ments such as classrooms and offices.
On the outer bounds of credibility are entrepreneurs who
tell you that they can diagnose your ADHD with a single
brain scan. We’ll address this development in more detail in
Chapter 10, but in short: Don’t believe them.

What Do You Need to Know about the Diagnostic and

Statistical Manual (DSM)?
The DSM is America’s most universally used and trusted
guide on how to diagnose mental illness, but it is also one of
the most controversial books ever written.
Published and periodically updated by the American
Psychiatric Association, the DSM is a comprehensive volume
that describes hundreds of mental disorders. Now in its fifth
edition, it has become indispensable for America’s clinicians,
researchers, pharmaceutical firms, drug-regulation agencies,
health insurance companies, the legal system, and policymak-
ers. The first, extremely slender edition of the DSM was pub-
lished in 1952, when it was more of a collection of statistics
than a comprehensive guide to diagnoses. In that manual,
there were precisely two disorders recognized as beginning
in childhood. In contrast, the current, fifth edition (known as
 How Do You Know If You Have It? 51

DSM-5) published in 2013, contains scores of mental disorders

with origins in the early years of life.
Clearly, the domain of mental illness has expanded greatly
over the last six decades, given increased scientific investiga-
tion of the brain and behavior, vastly enhanced clinical inter-
est, and—some would contend—greatly increased tendencies
to medicalize all too many kinds of behavior. In other words,
it can be tempting to label normal variations in behavior and
even developmentally appropriate traits as “pathology.” Along
these lines, the DSM has generated increasing controversy in
recent years. Critics have argued that its definitions are both
too rigid—arbitrarily branding behavior as either normal or
disturbed—and too subjective. To be sure, critiques have been
aimed at other efforts at standards for conditions (such as high
cholesterol levels) that fall on a continuum. But mental condi-
tions without unequivocal biomarkers are more contentious
and indeed more subject to bias. Parents who rate their child’s
ADHD symptoms, for example, may be influenced by their
own degree of stress, depression, or attitudes toward the child.
Another important critique aims at potential financial
conflicts of interest among the psychiatrists who help write
the rules. Many of these authors serve on boards or speak-
ers’ bureaus of pharmaceutical firms, or receive grants from
them for their research. In fact, in 2006, the Washington Post
reported that every single expert involved in writing criteria
for the DSM had ties to companies selling drugs for the rel-
evant ailments. The obvious danger is that they may make
diagnostic guidelines too loose, expanding the potential field
of people who are eligible—and with that, the market for sales
of medication.
The DSM is used mainly in the United States. A more
comprehensive competitor, the World Health Organization’s
International Classification of Diseases (ICD), which includes
both mental and physical disorders, is used by most of the rest
of the world, sometimes in conjunction with the DSM. The ICD
refers to what we know of as ADHD as hyperkinetic disorder
(HKD), and its guidelines are somewhat tighter, requiring, for
52 ADHD

example, that symptoms emerge by age 6 rather than by age

12. There is also no purely inattentive form of HKD.
Guidebooks such as the DSM serve many purposes. They
present the most up-to-date scientific knowledge about disor-
ders, help assure that clinicians use the same standards, and
provide the basis for insurance coverage. Yet experienced cli-
nicians refrain from taking them too literally, leaving room for
nuances and exceptions. And the categories within the DSM
don’t always map onto the complicated developmental path-
ways that lead to symptom display.

What is Neuropsychological Testing, and is it Ever a Good Idea?

Neuropsychological testing refers to an extensive battery of
tests related to cognition, attention, executive functions, IQ,
and even emotional well-being. The procedure has grown in
popularity in recent years, given society’s increasing aware-
ness of the complex variety of childhood and adult mental
health issues and the clamor for enhanced understanding as
to why some individuals aren’t learning or functioning up to
their potential. The battery of tests can yield detailed infor-
mation about strengths and weaknesses (e.g., stronger verbal
than nonverbal abilities, particular problems with working
memory, issues with visual versus auditory processing), pro-
viding recommendations for treatment and potentially for
school accommodations.
It’s not cheap: Testing can cost as much as $300 an hour,
with 20 or more hours needed for evaluations and for writ-
ing up results. Some clinicians charge as much as $10,000 for
a complete workup. If the child is having serious problems at
school, it is sometimes possible to get the school psychologist
to do at least some of these tests, as part of an individual edu-
cational program (as discussed later; see Chapter 9).
The advantage of the tests is that they provide a detailed
map of someone’s mental performance, rather than a single
diagnosis. It can often be advantageous for parents to share
 How Do You Know If You Have It? 53

such reports with a child’s teachers, who may have misin-

terpreted the youth’s behavior as rebellious, stubborn, or the
product of daydreaming when in fact the child is struggling
with a processing deficit and/or poor working memory.
Intelligence quotient (IQ) tests themselves provide a neu-
ropsychological profile across their many subtests, along with
the overall IQ score that purports to measure the individual’s
intellectual potential. Reading and math tests yield a clear pic-
ture of academic problems. Such tests can establish the pres-
ence of learning disorders, but they do not rule in or rule out
ADHD on their own.
In sum, neuropsychological tests of various processing abil-
ities can be, in some cases, a useful supplement, but they do
not replace the careful evaluation of the individual’s behavior
in real-world, day-to-day settings, necessary for establishing a
diagnosis of ADHD.

What Kinds of Professional Guidelines Exist for the

Diagnosis of ADHD?
Two major professional organizations, the American Academy
of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the American
Academy of Pediatrics, maintain detailed guidelines for diag-
nosing ADHD, based on the gold-standard, evidence-based
practices we’ve described in this chapter. The problem is that
only a minority of professionals follow them, and no govern-
ing body enforces them. Unfortunately, as well, few if any
insurance plans reimburse for the time and effort required to
follow such authoritative guidelines.
Most general practitioners and pediatricians are not well
trained in the procedures needed to diagnose ADHD, nor, as
we’ve mentioned, do even conscientious and informed clini-
cians usually have the time and budget to follow them. This
state of affairs sadly continues, even as evidence accumulates
of the extravagant long-term costs of quick-and-dirty evalua-
tions both in terms of personal suffering and financially—with
54 ADHD

taxpayers shelling out hundreds of billions of dollars a year

for costs of untreated ADHD.

What Kinds of Problems or Conditions Produce Symptoms

Similar to ADHD, and How Can Clinicians Distinguish Which
Issue or Issues to Treat First?
Several physical and mental problems can produce symptoms
resembling those of ADHD, such as inattention, distraction,
disorganization, and forgetfulness, which at least sometimes
need to be treated in a different manner. A good clinician
must be able to identify and assess them before deciding
that someone’s primary problem is ADHD. The technique for
doing this is known as differential diagnosis, referring to a pro-
cess of elimination by gathering evidence including a patient’s
medical history and symptoms.
Emotional and behavioral problems that can produce symp-
toms similar to those of ADHD include the following:

• Anxiety disorders: These include generalized anxiety

disorder, in which someone worries constantly about
almost everything; obsessive-compulsive disorder
(OCD), characterized by recurrent, unwanted, intrusive
thoughts (obsessions) and a compulsive need to perform
repetitive actions to undo these thoughts (compulsions);
specific phobias (such as fear of heights or social encoun-
ters); and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which
can emerge in the wake of physical or sexual abuse as
well as other traumatic life experiences. All of these dis-
orders can understandably diminish concentration but
often exist independent of ADHD. For example, although
ADHD symptoms are unrelenting, symptoms related to
anxiety are typically intermittent, and tied to particu-
lar triggering stimuli. The exception here is generalized
anxiety disorder, in which the individual is fearful of
most aspects of everyday life.
 How Do You Know If You Have It? 55

   Whereas some anxiety symptoms, including distraction

and forgetfulness, may appear to be similar to symptoms
of ADHD, they require significantly different treatment.
Stimulants, for instance, may well make a person with
a primary anxiety disorder even more anxious. All this
helps explain why it’s so important for a competent clini-
cian to ask the patient, and, if possible, other informants,
detailed questions about his or her symptoms.
• Mood disorders—primarily including depression
and bipolar disorder: Depression is a state of sadness
or even blankness, with loss of motivation and inter-
est in normal pursuits, changes in appetite and sleep,
social withdrawal, and as symptoms worsen, suicidal
thoughts. Poor concentration is commonly associated
with major depression—but here, the lack of focus is
directly tied to the person’s mood state. Bipolar disorder,
also known as manic-depressive illness, is characterized
by severe mood swings, between mania—elation, irrita-
bility, and impulsiveness—and depression. Along with
ADHD, mania shares impulsivity as a symptom and can
also interfere with clarity of thinking and self-control.
Yet unlike ADHD, mania is usually recurrent and epi-
sodic and is more likely to involve grandiose thinking.
It is important to get this differential diagnosis right,
as stimulants—a mainstay of medication treatment for
ADHD—can make manic states worse.
• Learning and processing disorders: These strongly
heritable conditions include dyslexia (impaired ability to
read), math disorder, and auditory processing disorder
(known as APD and sometimes called central auditory
processing disorder, which causes difficulty in distin-
guishing sounds from one another). In these conditions,
a student’s performance in subjects such as math, read-
ing, and spelling lags behind age expectations (and often,
his or her level of general intelligence). People with learn-
ing disorders may often be distracted and restless while
struggling with challenging learning tasks. ADHD, on
56 ADHD

the other hand, is more pervasive, revealing itself across

a wide range of situations that require effort and focus.
Although ADHD interventions, such as medication or
behavioral treatments, may help increase the general
focus of a child with a learning disorder, they won’t be
sufficient. More specific strategies are also needed.
• Trauma: Beyond official reports to authorities, which
tend to be gross underestimates, distressingly high
numbers of children are annually victimized by physi-
cal abuse, sexual abuse, and/or neglect. These traumas
produce a host of physical and psychological effects in
youth, including symptoms that can be similar to those
of ADHD. What’s more, ADHD and trauma may often
combine and be related.
   Sadly, researchers have found that children with
ADHD are more likely to be victims of child abuse by
their parents than are typically developing children.
Those with ADHD are often quite challenging to raise,
and the adults who may have undiagnosed ADHD are
likely to be impatient and overly reactive. Although both
boys and girls are at risk in this case, research exclu-
sively on girls by Maya Guendelman, during her time as
a graduate student in Hinshaw’s laboratory, has revealed
that girls with ADHD are more likely than other girls to
have experienced trauma at an early age. Moreover, these
girls are more likely than girls with ADHD who hadn’t
been mistreated to suffer anxiety and depression and to
eventually attempt suicide.
   One of the most important tasks for a clinician in such
cases is to find out which came first—the ADHD or the
abuse—and even more key, whether the abuse is still
continuing, as the impact of even the best treatment for
ADHD will be of limited help for a child under such cir-
cumstances. Often this delicate task will require inter-
views with a variety of informants so as not to rely on
the honesty of a potential abuser. Regrettably, although
 How Do You Know If You Have It? 57

early editions of the DSM included specific language

urging clinicians to obtain information about stressful
circumstances and abusive experiences, the current edi-
tion omits this important discussion.

Differential diagnosis is also crucial in determining whether

any one (or a combination) of several physical ailments listed
below may be producing the ADHD-like symptoms:

• Thyroid imbalances: The thyroid gland regulates the

metabolism of cells. Hypothyroidism, meaning an
underactive thyroid, can lead to sluggishness, inatten-
tion, and forgetfulness. Hyperthyroidism can make
someone restless and distracted.
• Sleep disorders: These include insomnia, sleep apnea,
and narcolepsy, all of which can result in distracted
daytime sleepiness. Making a differential diagnosis is
especially difficult in this case, as it’s often hard to dis-
tinguish the chicken from the egg. Many people with
ADHD rarely get a good night’s sleep—they may be too
busy, worried, or wired—which can compound their
symptoms. On the other hand, not getting a good night’s
sleep is a sure-fire recipe for poor concentration and for
anxiety, which can lead to sleeplessness on subsequent
nights.
   Scientists have been warning us for years about
the importance of a good night’s sleep for crucial rea-
sons including our emotional and physical well-being,
our ability to learn, and the consolidation of long-term
memory. Sleeplessness is especially likely to accentuate
a person’s focus on the negative rather than the positive.
A thorough clinician who evaluates someone for ADHD
should make sure to ask about the quality of a patient’s
sleep and, if necessary, order further tests to investigate
it. In some cases, removal of obstructions (e.g., tonsils)
can help sleep and ease ADHD symptoms.
58 ADHD

• Allergies: Allergies can lead to some of the symptoms

characteristic of ADHD, including forgetfulness and
poor concentration. It’s also possible to have ADHD plus
allergies, with worsening symptoms in the presence of
the allergens.
• Brain injuries, seizure disorders, and substance
abuse: Certain kinds of head injuries can lead to
symptoms that include a lack of focus and impulse
control problems. This chain of events can be circu-
lar: Early ADHD may lead to impulsive, dangerous
actions, resulting in head injuries that compound the
initial ADHD symptoms. Mild types of seizures (as
opposed to the most familiar and dramatic grand mal
seizures that lead to loss of consciousness) must also
be considered. These more subtle seizures, known as
absence or petit mal seizures, involve short bouts of
staring (sometimes combined with blinking or hand
gestures), which can be mistaken for the inattentive
form of ADHD. In addition, for adolescents and adults,
exposure to drugs and alcohol may lead to symptoms
resembling ADHD (e.g., loss of motivation related to
marijuana use, or cognitive impairment with regular
drinking). Of course, as pointed out below, ADHD
can also trigger alcohol and substance use, leading to
another kind of vicious cycle.

What Additional Disorders or Life Problems Commonly

Coexist with ADHD?
Research strongly suggests that well over half of children with
ADHD have at least one other psychiatric disorder besides
ADHD, and that many of these unlucky souls have two or more
such additional disorders. Sometimes these “side orders,” also
known as comorbidities, emerge before or at the same time as
ADHD becomes an issue, but at other times they can also be
consequences of living with ADHD and the experiences of
failure it so often incurs. Thus, it’s important to consider the
 How Do You Know If You Have It? 59

problems described above not only as conditions that mimic

ADHD but also as possible accompaniments that require addi-
tional treatments.
Overall, about one in three youth with ADHD will expe-
rience a significant anxiety disorder and about one in four
will have some form of learning disorder. Most children with
ADHD do not have major depression or bipolar disorder, but
up to one in four or even one in three may develop a mood
disorder by adolescence or adulthood.
Tourette syndrome is another close companion of ADHD.
Research shows that most children with ADHD do not have
this condition, marked by vocal and motor tics, including
embarrassing involuntary facial movements, and the propen-
sity to shout out offensive and taboo words. Yet more than half
of the much smaller group of individuals with Tourette syn-
drome have full-blown ADHD.
Still other common accompaniments to ADHD are behav-
ioral problems, chiefly including oppositional defiant dis-
order (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD). Around 40 percent
of all children with ADHD also have ODD, characterized by
extraordinarily stubborn behavior, including refusing to obey
rules, and defiantly arguing with adults. It’s most often kids
with the hyperactive-impulsive or combined forms of ADHD
who emerge with such patterns of aggression and defiance.
(Parents often say they could live with the ADHD if it weren’t
for the ODD.) Conduct disorder is an elevated form of ODD,
encompassing behavior such as fighting, bullying, lying, and
stealing. The youth in question may also destroy property,
break into homes, and be cruel to animals. As CD escalates, it
can lead to serious delinquency. Nearly one in five youth with
ADHD—usually adolescents with a long history of early ODD
and family dysfunction—will develop CD.
Substance abuse is another unfortunate common part-
ner of ADHD. Considerable research has shown strong links
between ADHD and excessive smoking and consumption of
alcohol and illegal drugs. Approximately one in four adult
60 ADHD

patients receiving treatment for alcohol and other drug abuse

has ADHD; during adolescence, that number is even higher,
nearly one in three. Looking at this differently, approximately
one-third of youth with ADHD develop substance abuse by
adulthood, well above the national average. Their problems
can quickly escalate, as consequences of alcohol, tobacco, and
illegal drugs may cause lasting physical and psychological
harm.
Children with ADHD are more likely to start smoking
tobacco and using and abusing alcohol earlier than their peers
and are also more likely to drink excessively. One study found
that on average about 40 percent of children with ADHD
began using alcohol at around age 15, about double the rate
among those without ADHD. The impulsivity and risk-taking
associated with ADHD, along with the academic and social
failures it can cause, may encourage early and excessive drink-
ing. Similarly, youth diagnosed with ADHD are more likely
to experiment with recreational drugs, including marijuana.
As marijuana has increasingly been legalized for medical
purposes, some doctors have prescribed it for teens suffer-
ing the anxiety and anger that can accompany ADHD. To put
it exceedingly mildly, we don’t believe this is a good idea, as
we'll elaborate in Chapter 10.
Sensory processing disorder (formerly called “sensory
integration dysfunction”) is another diagnosis often linked
to ADHD. It’s not an official learning disorder recognized in
the DSM. Yet some research indicates that as many as 1 in 20
children may be impaired by its symptoms. These can include
being oversensitive to sensory input, including not only from
the basic senses of smell, sight, sound, touch, and taste but also
from others that govern balance and coordination. Some kids
can’t tolerate bright lights and loud noises such as ambulance
sirens, while others refuse to wear certain articles of clothing
because they feel scratchy or irritating, even after tags and
labels are removed. Still others are distracted by background
noises that others don’t mind, recoil at an unexpected touch,
 How Do You Know If You Have It? 61

seem disoriented about where their body is in relation to other

objects or people, or have trouble sensing the amount of force
they’re applying (e.g., ripping a paper when using an eraser).
At the other extreme are children who chronically seek more
sensory stimulation—who may have, for example, a constant
need to touch people or textures, fail to understand the bound-
aries of others’ personal space, have an unusually high toler-
ance for pain, or seem to need to spin or jump around.
It’s easy to see how youth displaying these behaviors
could be mistaken for those with ADHD. What’s more con-
troversial is whether such tendencies are part of ADHD or
autism-spectrum disorders, or instead represent something
entirely different.

Are there Special Considerations for Diagnosing the

Inattentive Form of ADHD?
As we’ve mentioned, children, adolescents, and adults with
the inattentive form of ADHD can more easily slip under
the radar, in contrast to the impulsive, hyperactive types
who more often get in trouble and annoy people. Even when
such individuals come for an evaluation, clinicians may have
a harder time pinpointing their problems. Despite their less
overt symptoms, however, they’ve been shown in many stud-
ies to have cognitive difficulties, academic failures, and other
long-lasting problems on par in severity with their hyperac-
tive peers. They may be suffering in silence, but they’re suffer-
ing just the same.
Children and adolescents with the inattentive variant of
ADHD are often labeled “spacey” or lethargic. They defy the
stereotype that youth with ADHD are loud and defiant, and
can easily escape the notice of teachers, who are understand-
ably more concerned with more disruptive students. Adults
with the inattentive form show particular problems with
organization and with executive functions including plan-
ning and working memory. A good clinician will take the
62 ADHD

necessary time to understand such a patient’s academic his-

tory. If the child or adolescent indeed has the inattentive form
of ADHD, it’s unlikely that he or she will have been punished
for bad behavior but more common that one or more of his or
her teachers will have said something like “If only he tried
harder …” or “She would do so much better if she could only
keep track of her materials.” The practitioner should also real-
ize differences between inattentive youth and others with
ADHD in terms of their social lives. Whereas children with
the hyperactive-impulsive or combined forms of ADHD may
be rejected by peers, those with the inattentive form may more
often be ignored. They don’t burn bridges like their aggressive,
intrusive peers, but they share the same trouble reading social
cues and are likely to be labeled as “weird”.
Finally, clinicians need to be on alert for a subgroup of both
children and adults who struggle with inattention and dis-
traction and are also unusually lethargic and prone to day-
dreams. Researchers describe this niche condition as “sluggish
cognitive tempo” (SCT), referring to both a mental and physi-
cal lethargy. The term is not an official diagnosis as yet and
is controversial, especially given its pejorative tone. Yet it
has garnered recent clinical interest in that it may signal the
need for a distinct diagnosis, apart from ADHD. Research has
shown that roughly half of the people scoring high for SCT
don’t meet the criteria for inattentive ADHD. Much more work
needs to be done in this area, especially given that SCT, still
so poorly understood, can lead to serious problems in school
and at work.

What Can You Do to Make Sure You Get the Best

Possible Assessment?
Given the general rule of quick-and-dirty diagnoses—and
the unfortunate fact that even some medical professionals
still don’t believe ADHD is real—it’s essential to see some-
one knowledgeable, well-trained, and experienced, who can
 How Do You Know If You Have It? 63

examine you or your child objectively and thoroughly, taking

the time needed for a valid assessment.
Start by asking your personal physician or your child’s
pediatrician for a referral to a mental health professional who
is qualified to perform an ADHD evaluation. Other parents,
teachers, and local ADHD support groups can also be a good
source of referrals. And adding new transparency to a histori-
cally murky system are websites like Yelp, Healthgrades, and
RateMDs.com. Don’t trust everything you read on these sites,
but it’s worth a check before you make that first appointment.
Understand that this is going to be a time-consuming pro-
cess. Give yourself the advantage of a good education. Finish
reading this book, and, if you still have time, some of the other
books and websites we list for you at the end. Figure out where
you stand on potential treatments, so you won’t waste time
anguishing in the specialist’s office. If the evaluation results in
a diagnosis, will you be adamantly opposed to medication or
willing to give it a try? Are you prepared to spend the consid-
erable effort required for behavior therapies?
You now know what a good evaluation entails, so prepare
to spend time answering many detailed questions about you
and your family’s history. It will also be worthwhile to figure
out your insurance coverage and how much treatment you can
afford.
At your first meeting with a specialist, make sure to bring
a notebook and pen, or laptop, and have your questions ready.

Focusing On: Diagnosis

It takes careful and thorough assessment to determine whether
someone should be diagnosed with ADHD. It’s also, necessar-
ily, a low-tech and potentially subjective process that ideally
entails a decision by a well-trained professional who has gath-
ered and evaluated input from a variety of sources. One day we
may be able to provide patients with a quick blood test or brain
scan that would provide a clear answer, but we’re not there yet
64 ADHD

and won’t be for the foreseeable future. Computerized atten-

tion tests, costly batteries of neuropsychological exams, and IQ
and achievement examinations may help to pinpoint underly-
ing cognitive issues but can't provide a definitive diagnosis for
ADHD. There is simply no substitute for a thorough analysis
of a patient’s history and behavior.
A skillful clinician will make sure to investigate whether
other mental or physical problems may be causing ADHD
symptoms. These can include sleep disorders, thyroid prob-
lems, trauma, and anxiety. ADHD medication can help in
only some of these cases; in others, it can cause serious prob-
lems. A conscientious evaluator will also ask questions about
possible conditions that often coexist with ADHD, such as
depression, substance abuse, and oppositional or delinquent
behavior, as these are all serious problems that may need sepa-
rate treatment.
 5
HOW DOES ADHD CHANGE
OVER THE LIFESPAN?

What Does ADHD Look Like in the Earliest Years of Life?

No one ever said it was easy to raise toddlers and preschoolers
under the best of circumstances. Most parents quickly under-
stand why the third year of life is known as the Terrible Twos.
But imagine living with a child who gave up naps at age 1,
goes to bed later and wakes up much earlier than most other
kids, and who’s constantly on the go—running into the street
and playing with anything sharp that may be lying around.
Imagine trying to civilize a little boy or girl who stubbornly
resists being told what to do, turning the most routine events
into escalating power struggles; who terrorizes his or her pre-
school teacher, and fellow students, sometimes to the point
of being thrown out of the class; and who requires constant
supervision to preserve the furniture, not to mention the
physical safety of siblings and pets. It’s no joke: Children with
excess hyperactivity-impulsivity can turn family life into a
seemingly endless chain of crises.
Rates of accidental injury for such children are dangerously
high, while for their parents so are rates of tension, self-blame,
and general misery. Sisters and brothers who don’t share the
symptoms may be justifiably aggrieved that their overly active
sibling requires so much extra attention. In extreme cases,
66 ADHD

when families are under excessive stress, young children with

ADHD are at high risk of being physically abused.
Professional groups including the American Academy of
Pediatrics are now calling for recognition and treatment of
ADHD as early as age 4. The goal of such early intervention is
to help keep families together and calm, reduce injury rates,
and ultimately head off what could be years of failure and
demoralization.
Although some parents swear they can tell their baby is
going to have diagnosable problems from the first sleepless
night and although some experts claim they can diagnose
ADHD as early as age 2, it’s virtually impossible to distinguish
extremes of normal development from ADHD behaviors until
the child is nearly 4 years old. Not coincidentally, the current
professional standards set the age at which a child can be legit-
imately diagnosed to the time when that child may first need
to muster self-control in a preschool class.
As this answer implies, the inattentive form of ADHD typi-
cally does not reveal itself until the challenges of grade school
are encountered. Problems with speech and language, forget-
fulness, the inability to follow directions, lack of focus during
play or while listening to a story, and early pre-reading issues
may be some of the first indicators of this variant of ADHD in
young children.

What are the Typical Consequences of ADHD in Grade School?

Academics
Normally it’s by second grade, when teachers first start get-
ting serious about academics and assigning homework, that
children with ADHD start to get into real trouble. They can
forget to write down their homework assignments, become too
distracted to finish them, or, even more frustrating, complete
the work but leave it at home on the day that it’s due. They
find almost anything else to be more interesting and exciting
 How Does ADHD Change Over the Lifespan? 67

than listening to the teacher or paying attention during read-

ing circle.
Long-term research has shown that more than half of
children with ADHD will end up failing at least one grade
of school. Although there is at best a very small correlation
between ADHD and intelligence—some kids with the disor-
der may be geniuses, while others are not so bright—students
with ADHD on average perform well below normal on stan-
dardized tests for math, reading, and spelling. In some cases
accompanying learning disorders are to blame, but the clas-
sic ADHD problems of inattention, impulse control problems,
and lack of self-regulation often suffice.

Social Life
Also by second grade, the social demands at school also start
to ramp up. Kids who used to invite everyone in their class-
room to their birthday parties become more discriminating.
Children start having their own say, overruling their parents
about whom they want to come over for a play-date. Cliques
start to form, and kids with ADHD—who may be making
social blunders by invading others’ space and teasing too
aggressively—tend to get left out. Parents of children with a
history of ADHD report almost three times as many problems
with peers as is the norm.
Evidence suggests that kids with ADHD are more often
rejected by their peers than children with any other mental
or behavioral disorder, including depression, anxiety, autism,
or even delinquency. (They develop negative reputations with
peers distressingly quickly.) And this is an issue that should
never be ignored. In several large-scale investigations of entire
school districts, researchers have found that peer rejection
during the grade-school years, as reported by classmates, was
the single strongest predictor of delinquency, failure to fin-
ish high school, and long-lasting mental health problems. In
other words, being ostracized by peers was more influential in
68 ADHD

a child’s development than medical conditions, achievement

levels, teacher reports of school-related behaviors, and parent
ratings of skills and problems. The impact is similar to that
of being expelled from school, given that in both situations,
the outcast child not only suffers the immediate harm of rejec-
tion but is deprived of the conditions to keep learning and
improve, academically and socially.
The good news is that researchers have found that even one
high-quality friendship can at least partly outweigh the neg-
ative impact of multiple rejections from peers. The problem
here is that children with ADHD are slower to make friends,
more likely to have conflicts with such peers once they do, and
have more trouble repairing damaged relationships.
Once you understand just how devastating the social con-
sequences of ADHD can be, you’ll likely also realize that find-
ing ways for a child with the disorder to avoid being isolated
and rejected must be a key part of his or her treatment.

Family Conflict
The stress load on the parents of children with ADHD—
and particularly on mothers, who still provide most of the
care—greatly increases when those children are in grade
school and first encountering serious problems with teachers
and peers. Mothers of children with ADHD, who are so often
the target of judgment by teachers and other parents, report
that they have far lower levels of self-esteem and markedly
more depression, self-blame, and social isolation than mothers
of children without ADHD.
Researchers have found that parenting-related stress levels
are actually higher for parents of youth with ADHD than for
parents of children with autism spectrum disorders. The rates
of separation and divorce in such cases are estimated to be at
least twice the national rate. Even for parents of children with
the inattentive form of ADHD, nightly battles over homework
inflict serious levels of wear and tear. One of the most serious
 How Does ADHD Change Over the Lifespan? 69

problems is that after months or years of fruitless arguing,

cajoling, and conflict, many parents of children with ADHD
slip into a state known as “learned helplessness,” in which
they may begin to withdraw from their children, providing
little if any supervision during the teen years, when clear lim-
its are more important than ever.

How does ADHD Reveal Itself During Adolescence?

By the teen years, many adolescents who’ve been diagnosed
with ADHD may be noticeably less hyperactive than they
were as young children, although roughly three-quarters of
those who have been diagnosed will still meet the DSM cri-
teria for the disorder. Many teenagers and adults with ADHD
report that although they’re less physically active than before,
their minds are still revving at high speed. Moreover, recall
that ADHD is far more than just hyperactivity: The underly-
ing problems with attention, focus, and general self-regulation
often end up causing the most hardships.
As we’ve noted, problems at school usually become more
serious as children transition to middle school and high school,
when demands for organizational skills increase. No longer is
there just one teacher, and the schedule often changes every
day of the week. Responsibility shifts to the student to keep
track of homework. The work is increasingly conceptual, and
if the basic skills haven’t been mastered early on, it’s increas-
ingly hard for teens to catch up with their peers.
By age 18, at least three times as many teens with ADHD
as those without the disorder will have failed a grade or been
suspended or expelled. As we’ve mentioned, about a third of
youth with ADHD quit school before completing 12th grade.
By adolescence, most youth start pushing for more indepen-
dence, taking more risks, and challenging adult authority. The
teen brain is wired to test limits, in an evolutionary press to
separate from parents. Yet children with ADHD often carry
this natural tendency to extremes. Their sensation-seeking and
70 ADHD

impulsive personalities come with higher propensities for all

kinds of antisocial behavior, including abuse of alcohol, drugs,
and cigarettes. All sorts of addictions become dangers in the
teen years, including compulsive Internet use and gambling,
both for youth with the hyperactive and inattentive forms of
ADHD. Teens with ADHD also become sexually active at a
younger age than their peers. It’s around this time that ADHD
first becomes a genuine public health issue, associated with
higher than normal rates of teen pregnancies and sexually
transmitted diseases as well as car accidents, other fatal and
nonfatal injuries, juvenile delinquency, hospital stays, and
emergency room visits. Girls with ADHD, as they become
young women, are more likely than their peers to suffer physi-
cal abuse from their partners.
Mood disorders, self-harm, and even suicide attempts are
also risks. All adolescents are more likely to suffer depression
than children, but teens with ADHD are at special risk. Youth
can become demoralized while brooding over the many fail-
ures and social rejections that can come with the disorder.
Girls with ADHD are not only at special risk for depression
in these years, but also have high rates of eating disorders,
especially bulimia, involving bingeing and purging, which
is linked with impulse control problems. Male and female
teens with ADHD alike are more likely than peers to eat and
sleep poorly, compromising their health. Strikingly, teenage
girls with ADHD are also significantly more likely than their
peers to attempt suicide and to cut themselves as a way to
cope with emotional pain. Their impulsivity becomes partic-
ularly dangerous in these years, as we explain in more detail
in Chapter 6.
Driving, however, is where the rubber literally hits the road.
Teen drivers are scary enough—car accidents are the leading
cause of death for Americans aged 15 to 19—but adolescent
drivers with ADHD can be terrifying. Most of us have trouble
resisting the ping of an incoming text on our cellphones while
driving, but for adolescents with ADHD, it’s simply not a fair
 How Does ADHD Change Over the Lifespan? 71

fight. Moreover, studies have shown that the mere presence of

peers in the car can markedly enhance a teen driver’s risk tak-
ing; for kids with ADHD, that risk is once again compounded.
During their first few years of driving, teens with ADHD
are involved in nearly four times as many car accidents as
those without the disorder. They also get three times as many
speeding tickets as their peers and are more likely to injure
others in accidents. Simulated driving tests have provided sub-
stantial evidence of the two devils of inattention (or spacing
out) and impulsivity as leading to risky choices, such as trying
to run every yellow light. As deaths and injuries from teen
drivers have steadily increased, most US states have switched
to a graduated licensing system, in which youth learn to drive
under progressively more challenging situations. Some states
require a three-stage process, starting with a learner’s permit,
during which a licensed adult must always be in the car with
the teen, followed by an intermediate or provisional license
and finally by a full license.
Parents should make sure that their teens with ADHD get
extra driving practice and delay that trip to the Department
of Motor Vehicles as long as possible. It’s also wise to keep the
risks of driving in mind and make sure that the child is being
treated for the disorder, with medication or behavior thera-
pies, well before the 16th birthday.

To what Extent Does ADHD Persist into Adulthood?

A mere generation ago, most experts believed that ADHD
symptoms vanished at puberty. Today we know that
although it’s true that physically hyperactive behavior fades
by adolescence, other serious symptoms, including intense
mental restlessness, serious inattention, impulsivity, and
executive-function-related problems with planning and
self-organization persist well into adulthood. Researchers
have found that half or more of children with ADHD con-
tinue to meet criteria for the diagnosis as adults. And that rate
72 ADHD

climbs to about two-thirds when diagnosticians collect clini-

cal data from additional informants.
Even when adults no longer meet the full criteria for
ADHD, they may still be seriously impaired by accompanying
or resulting disorders such as anxiety, depression, substance
abuse, antisocial behavior, and gambling or Internet addic-
tions. Their social ties may well be frayed, with high risk for
difficulties in intimate relationships, and they may have a bit-
ter history of academic and professional failures. Researchers
have found that adults who have been diagnosed with ADHD
are up to 14 percent less likely than their peers to have a job.
On average, they also earn 33 percent less compared with peo-
ple in similar lines of work and are 15 percent more likely to be
receiving some form of government aid.
The bottom line is that adult ADHD is not only real but has
potentially devastating consequences.

How does ADHD Influence People’s Self-Esteem?

Like many other things in life, self-esteem—your basic sense
of worth—is best experienced in moderation. Utterly low
self-worth can be paralyzing, linked to depression and despair.
Yet overly high self-esteem can border on narcissism, sabotag-
ing personal relationships.
Intriguing research has revealed that nearly all of us believe
we’re performing at least somewhat better than average,
whether or not that’s true. In other words, it’s normal and also
probably healthy to have a slightly inflated belief in ourselves.
Sadly, however, that’s not typically the case for people with
ADHD, at least in terms of global self-esteem. Although some
are able to maintain a positive view of themselves, research
shows that for many others self-esteem starts dwindling after
childhood, as failures and rejections accumulate. Such decreas-
ing self-image compounds the symptoms and impairments
related to ADHD. At the same time, however, it’s also the case
that many people with ADHD have the opposite problem of an
 How Does ADHD Change Over the Lifespan? 73

inflated self-image. Within specific domains, these individuals

perceive that they’re doing better than what others think or
than what objective tests reveal. The clinical term for this phe-
nomenon is “positive illusory bias,” and it may predict, under-
standably, a lack of motivation to change. It’s still not known,
however, whether it’s the inflated self-views or the low perfor-
mance of these individuals that’s the culprit.

But Wait! Isn’t ADHD Really a Gift?

Please excuse us if all the worrisome news in this chapter
seems depressing. And, yes, there is a contingent of writers
and other advocates who maintain that ADHD is a gift. Let’s
look at some of the reasons they say this.
For one thing, scientists believe that the genes linked
to ADHD stem from as far back as hunter-gatherer societ-
ies, when it made obvious sense for the survival of the spe-
cies that a percentage of people would be particularly prone
to risk-taking and impulsivity. In such contexts, people with
ADHD might be the most vigilant hunters, extra-alert to both
potential prey and predators.
The common ADHD trait of novelty-seeking has also been
useful in times of dramatic change. For instance, about 15,000
years ago in Asia, when a land bridge was present across the
Bering strait, daredevils carrying the DRD4-7R allele were
the most likely to migrate to North America. These nomads
followed game from Siberia into Alaska, eventually travel-
ing all the way into South America. Researchers have since
discovered that the farther one travels down the west coast
of North and South America, the higher the concentrations of
the DRD4-7R allele (associated with novelty-seeking) that are
found in human remains.
Darwin’s theory of natural selection suggests that if the
DRD4-7R allele and other gene patterns associated with ADHD
were inherently harmful for our species, they would have
vanished long ago. And indeed, today, several wealthy and
74 ADHD

famous entrepreneurs, artists and entertainers, and even aca-

demics have publicized their childhood problems with dis-
traction and early school failures. Some proponents of the gift
theory point out that because ADHD is often a disorder of
disinhibition—faulty brakes—it confers an advantage in that
one’s brain doesn’t squelch flights of fancy as quickly as others
may do, leading to more potential innovative insights. Albert
Einstein has become a poster child for this argument, due to his
biographers’ portrayal of him as a disorganized daydreamer
reportedly late to speak as a tot, who later dropped out of
high school. Another frequent example is Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart, described by his biographers as blurting out vulgari-
ties, having verbal and motor tics, and given to composing
music while walking, riding a horse, or playing billiards.
Does any of this mean we should go ahead and start call-
ing ADHD a gift? Maybe not, at least not yet. Although CEOs
of major firms may claim their ADHD traits make them more
creative and less risk-averse, they sometimes omit to add that
they are able to thrive thanks to dedicated personal assistants.
Nor are they usually eager to dwell on the risk-taking deci-
sions that didn’t work out so well. Some of the partners of such
CEOs might also tell a different story.
Both JetBlue CEO David Neeleman and Kinko’s founder
Paul Orfalea (who prefers to call learning disorders “learning
opportunities”) have credited their ADHD as contributing to
their success. Neeleman, who said he thought he was “stupid”
all through high school and reported that he spent his adoles-
cence in a fog, watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island, went on to
be the founder of two airlines and be credited for inventing
electronic ticketing. On the other hand, he was fired in 2007,
after a disastrous week of stranded planes and passengers.
Similarly, proponents of the gift paradigm have hailed the
Olympic medalist swimmer Michael Phelps for his unusual
energy and hyper-focus, although such praise was muted after
Phelps was photographed with a bong in 2009 and arrested for
drunken driving (twice) several years later.
 How Does ADHD Change Over the Lifespan? 75

We’ll never know whether Mozart or Einstein might have

warranted a diagnosis of ADHD and even benefited from
modern forms of treatment. Each life has so many variables.
As one biographer has theorized, Mozart’s social isolation—a
circumstance in his case imposed by his father, who insisted
on educating him, but which unfortunately is shared by many
people with ADHD—may have slowed his emotional matu-
rity, which never quite caught up with his extraordinary intel-
lect. He was often anxious, lonely, and sad, writing just before
his death, “I have come to the end before having enjoyed my
talent.” Would medicinal or psychotherapeutic support have
eased Mozart's pain? Would it also possibly have muted his
genius? We'll never know, but what’s certain from our per-
spective is that one of the wisest appraisals of the ADHD gift/
curse riddle has come from psychiatrist and author Edward
Hallowell, who has described ADHD as a gift that is hard to
unwrap. In even the best of cases, it needs a lot of managing
and support.

What Contexts Best Suit People with ADHD?

We’ll say it again: Context is key for people with ADHD.
Although there are no magic settings or professions, we know
that it helps a great deal for many students with ADHD to be
able to get up and move more than once every hour, and for
adults to find jobs with novelty and excitement, combined with
at least some structure. Some ADHD experts recommend mili-
tary service for young adults with the disorder, to help instill
discipline; others suggest high-intensity jobs in sales, polic-
ing, or entertaining. People with ADHD are overrepresented
among self-employed entrepreneurs, often because they may
have difficulties with authority or working with others.
Wherever someone with ADHD ends up studying, work-
ing, or raising a family, he or she is likely to require a great
deal of support and understanding from others, as well as
continued engagement in successful treatments. As we hope
76 ADHD

we’ve shown, the same traits that can be gifts in certain con-
texts can also produce risk for conflict and disappointments.

What is the Evidence for Resilience in People with ADHD—that

is, the Chance for Positive Outcomes Despite the Symptoms?
It’s important to keep in mind that not everyone at risk for
the worrisome outcomes we’ve described in these pages will
develop a problem. Certainly, not all individuals diagnosed
with ADHD inevitably fail in school, are rejected by their
peers, experience high levels of accidental injury, or, by ado-
lescence, have problems with substance abuse, self-harm, or
delinquency. A subgroup of people will always manage to beat
the odds. Scientists are keenly interested in the traits and cir-
cumstances that create such resilience. Although there is at yet
a dearth of evidence to answer this question, they’ve found
that such protective factors often boil down to a person’s inner
traits, including intelligence, a sense of humor, and a perceived
stake in the future.
What seem to matter most of all are supportive adults (and
peers) in the life of a youth, the building of at least one skill
set that can translate into productive work in the future, and
adherence to treatments that have proven successful. We’d like
to see more studies in this field, together with treatment strate-
gies that aim not just to fix deficits but also to build strengths.

Focusing On: ADHD Over the Lifespan

During the preschool years, ADHD symptoms are difficult to
distinguish from the impulsive behavior of many other tod-
dlers. Yet in extreme cases, they can lead to disasters, includ-
ing family chaos, injuries, and even expulsion from school.
A careful clinician can detect when ADHD is the core prob-
lem and deploy strategies that reduce the chance of worse out-
comes down the line. The majority of childhood diagnoses of
ADHD take place in grade school, when differences between
 How Does ADHD Change Over the Lifespan? 77

children with the disorder and their peers first start to stand
out. This is the time when untreated children begin to have
problems with homework, lose friends, and possibly start to
hate school. Family relationships can also deteriorate, and par-
ents can face overwhelming stress. ADHD can make the teen-
age years even more taxing, and sometimes catastrophic, as
the risks increase of an onslaught including further academic
problems, abuse of drugs and alcohol, delinquency, mood dis-
orders, teen pregnancies, sexually transmitted disease, and
addictions to gambling and the Internet. A particularly serious
danger is distracted and impulsive driving, contributing to
traffic accidents that are the number-one killer of adolescents.
By adulthood, as many as half of those diagnosed with
ADHD will no longer have conspicuous symptoms, but most
will be suffering the fallout in terms of anxiety, depression,
divorce, and the toll of academic and professional failures.
Self-esteem decreases over time in people with ADHD, who
must struggle to avoid either an overly pessimistic sense of
self-worth or inflated views about their performance.
Despite all the long-term problems associated with ADHD,
enough people with the disorder end up thriving to encourage
the view that what’s normally viewed as an impairment can be
beneficial with the right supports. We’re eager for additional
research into how these individuals manage to beat the odds,
turning hyperactivity into energy, impulsivity into creativity,
and daydreaming into innovation.
 6
HOW MUCH DOES IT MATTER
WHO YOU ARE AND
WHERE YOU LIVE?

How Do ADHD Rates Vary Between Males and Females?

An enduring myth about ADHD is that it affects only or mainly
boys. For much of the twentieth century, five to as many as 10
boys for every girl were diagnosed with the disorder. More
recently, however, girls have been rapidly catching up. The
National Survey of Children’s Health, a major US survey in
2011–2012—showed that roughly 15 percent of boys have been
diagnosed, compared with 6.7 percent of girls, suggesting a
ratio of between two and two-and-a-half to one.
We believe that this ratio is a more or less accurate reflec-
tion of reality. Although all too many girls with ADHD have
historically slipped under the radar, to their detriment, as we
explain later on in this chapter, ADHD is in fact more preva-
lent among boys. For reasons scientists still don’t completely
understand—but perhaps related to slower brain development
in boys—ADHD shares this kind of male predominance with
other neurodevelopmental problems that first appear in child-
hood, including autism-spectrum disorders, serious physical
aggression, tics and movement disorders such as Tourette
syndrome, and some forms of learning disorders. During the
early years of childhood, girls have higher verbal abilities than
boys; they are also more compliant, empathic, and socially
80 ADHD

oriented. It’s no surprise, then, that, boys are overrepresented

when it comes to childhood mental disorders characterized by
social problems (autism), attentional/behavioral symptoms
(ADHD), compliance-related behaviors (oppositional defiant
disorder, or ODD), and frankly aggressive actions (conduct
disorder, or CD).
It’s a fact that boys are more at risk during grade school
for behavioral problems, particularly of the externalizing kind
(e.g., noncompliance, aggression, and impulsivity). Yet girls
catch up in a different manner during the second decade
of life. In the preteen and teenage years, girls are mark-
edly more at risk for so-called internalizing behaviors, such
as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and self-injury. It’s
also at this stage in their lives that many girls end up being
seen by a clinician and given a diagnosis of ADHD for the
first time.

How Do the Symptoms Vary Between the Two Genders?

The answer to this question is somewhat complicated. Girls
who meet the criteria for ADHD are generally likelier than boys
to be diagnosed with the inattentive type of the disorder, char-
acterized by day-dreaminess, distraction, and disorganization.
Overall, males are typically prone to be more physically active
and have more problems with impulse control than are girls.
Many girls with the hyperactive-impulsive and combined
forms of ADHD look and act surprisingly like boys with the
disorder in terms of impulse-control problems, overactive
behavior, and even sheer orneriness, even as their rates of out-
right violent behavior are much lower. At the same time, girls
tend to be hyperverbal rather than hyperactive. Their impul-
sivity may also take a more subtle form—for example, a young
girl who is extraordinarily impulsive may be less likely than a
boy to run out into traffic but more likely to indiscriminately
pick the first answer on a multiple choice test (“cognitive”
versus “behavioral” impulsivity).
 How Much Does It Matter Who You Are and Where You Live? 81

As a rule, girls more often than boys are socialized from an

early age to cooperate and conform. One consequence of this
is that girls with ADHD are more likely than boys to become
anxious as they try to compensate for their distraction. Girls
typically care more about their school performance—and in
general about what others think of them—than boys. Thus, an
intelligent girl with ADHD in middle school or high school
may succeed in covering up her symptoms with almost obses-
sive perfectionism but fall apart later when the work becomes
too hard to master.
Moreover, just as girls tend to be harder on themselves than
boys, evidence suggests that other people, including parents
and family members, also judge girls more harshly than boys
when inattentiveness and impulsivity promote struggles with
typically female areas of competence such as paying atten-
tion in class, reading social cues, showing self-control, empa-
thizing, and cooperating. Life can be especially hard for the
approximately half of all girls with ADHD who fit the criteria
for hyperactive-impulsive or combined forms, because they’re
more likely to be rejected by peers who judge their behavior as
boyish, weird, or out-of-synch with female norms.

What are the Long-Term Consequences of ADHD for Females,

Especially When the Disorder isn’t Addressed in Childhood?
We’ve already told you how the rate of girls diagnosed with
ADHD has been catching up with that of boys. Now we have
another surprise: For women, today’s rates are even closer to
those of men, roughly on the order of 1 to 1.5 or even lower.
What’s going on?
We don’t know for sure, but can make some informed
guesses, based on recent lifespan research. First, however, it’s
worth a reminder that childhood disorders are mostly based
on reports by adults (parents and teachers) whereas adult con-
ditions are diagnosed largely on the basis of self-report. When
women reach adulthood, they become much more responsible
82 ADHD

for their own healthcare and are generally more likely than
men to admit to problems. As awareness has grown about
female ADHD, more women have been seeking answers to
questions that may have mystified them for many years. Many
also first begin to suspect they have ADHD after having a
child who gets diagnosed.
Another factor tipping the scales is that the inatten-
tive form of ADHD (which, again, is more common in
women than in men) appears to be more persistent than the
hyperactive-impulsive variant, making it more likely a female
adult will still have problems, when for many males, many
salient symptoms will have disappeared by then. As we’ve
noted, even when core systems improve, the companion disor-
ders that often accompany ADHD in females—including anxi-
ety, depression, and eating disorders—may persist, eventually
encouraging women to get help. Additionally, girls are more
responsive than boys, in general, to the pressures and struc-
ture of school. Once these supports are gone, young women
with ADHD may be more vulnerable to their tendencies to be
disorganized.
Overall there’s no longer any question today that women
experience ADHD at much higher rates than were previ-
ously assumed. Beyond the sheer numbers of new diagnoses
is the fact that prescriptions for ADHD medications are now
rising faster for adult women than for any other segment
of the population. Even so, outside of Hinshaw’s research,
there are few long-term studies of girls with ADHD followed
into adulthood, providing little useful research to date on
the brain-based differences between female and male symp-
toms. Still, a sufficient number of girls with ADHD have
now been studied to yield a vivid picture of the female ver-
sion of this disorder. During childhood, girls meeting rigor-
ous criteria for ADHD show serious behavioral, academic,
and interpersonal problems, on par with those of boys. As
we’ve mentioned, they are less likely than boys to act out
aggressively but more likely to suffer depression, anxiety,
 How Much Does It Matter Who You Are and Where You Live? 83

and related “internalizing” problems. Some early research

revealed that girls with ADHD were more likely than boys
to suffer language deficits and other intellectual delays,
although more recent studies do not always confirm this
contention.
Throughout adolescence, girls are just as likely as boys to
experience the major life problems we’ve described as stem-
ming from ADHD, including academic underachievement
and social awkwardness. Their risk for substance abuse may,
however, be lower.
Nonetheless, Hinshaw’s research, which has followed
its participants systematically every 5 years—beginning in
the late 1990s, with a 15-year follow-up slated for publica-
tion in 2016—has found one especially alarming problem. By
early adulthood, a proportion of girls with ADHD engages
in self-destructive behavior, including cutting and burning
themselves, as well as actual suicide attempts. This high risk
has appeared chiefly in those sample members who were
diagnosed with the combined form of ADHD when they were
girls, suggesting strongly that impulsivity (and the social
problems that come with it) plays a strong role here. In fact,
almost one in four young women with this combined (inat-
tentive plus hyperactive/impulsive) form of childhood ADHD
had made a suicide attempt by early adulthood, and more than
half were engaging in moderate to severe levels of cutting and
other forms of self-destruction. This level of self-harm in girls
has not been found with boys or men.
Although girls with the inattentive form of ADHD have
comparatively less risk for self-destructive behavior, they do
struggle with significant academic problems and a high inci-
dence of traffic accidents due to distraction. In Understanding
Girls with AD/HD, their classic volume on girls with ADHD,
Kathleen Nadeau, Ellen Littman, and Patricia Quinn describe
the special hardships for girls with the inattentive type of
ADHD as they mature, including perfectionism and social
isolation.
84 ADHD

What are the Differences in Diagnoses Among Racial and

Economic Groups?
The face of American ADHD has been changing dramatically
in recent decades. As late as the 1980s, the typical diagnosed
child was white, suburban, and relatively well-off. But today,
ADHD is no longer an illness of the affluent: African American
youth are just as likely as white youth to receive diagnoses and
prescriptions. In recent years, ADHD diagnoses of children
from families in poverty have outnumbered those of children
from wealthier families.
In other words, the former stereotype that cultural depri-
vation was the only valid explanation for inattentive and
disruptive behavior among African American children and
adolescents has gone by the wayside. In fact, ADHD appears
in all ethnic groups and socioeconomic levels, and rates of
diagnosis are now catching up with this reality. A persistent
exception until recently, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear,
has applied to Latino youth. For many years, their rate of
diagnosis lagged behind other groups, with national surveys
showing that they received diagnoses at about half the rates of
other ethnicities. Interestingly, federal researchers have found
that children whose families came from Mexico have among
the lowest ADHD rates, while those from Puerto Rico more
closely match the national average. At the same time, data
from the Kaiser Permanente healthcare system in California
reveal that Latino rates of ADHD have recently been climbing
faster than those in other groups, suggesting that their num-
bers may eventually catch up.

What Accounts for the Increased Diagnoses Among Racial

Minorities and Low-Income Groups in Recent Years?
Many of the same factors that have driven the surge in rates of
diagnoses for wealthy and middle-class whites are now boost-
ing rates for low-income minorities. These include the rise in
general awareness of the disorder, the reduction (at least to
 How Much Does It Matter Who You Are and Where You Live? 85

some extent) of stigma, and the loosening of criteria for diag-

nosis. At the same time, changes in government policy that
have also affected white and well-off children have had an
outsized impact on diagnoses for low-income minorities.
From 1975, with the passage of the Education for All
Handicapped Children Act, the federal government required
public schools to accommodate children with disabili-
ties that included documented behavioral, emotional, and
learning skills. It wasn’t until after much lobbying by advo-
cates, however, that the law was reauthorized in 1991 as the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which
specifically included ADHD in a list of “health-impaired con-
ditions” that could lead to special-education accommodations
(see Chapter 2). These valuable school-based supports have
included diagnostic testing, special tutoring, resource-room
placements, and special day classes (for the most severely
affected youth), all free of charge. Not surprisingly, rates of
ADHD diagnosis soon rose, as middle- and low-income fami-
lies who could never have afforded the many thousands of dol-
lars for such services sought special status for their children.
Around this time, the Supreme Court ruled that
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments to low-income
Americans must include those with diagnoses of ADHD and
related impairments. Similarly, the US Congress expanded
Medicaid coverage to include youth with ADHD. Because
this coverage paid for medication (but not behavioral inter-
ventions), Medicaid-authorized prescriptions for ADHD
rose tenfold within the next decade. In fact, recent national
surveys have shown that families receiving Medicaid have
been reporting significantly higher rates of ADHD diagnosis
in their children than those with private insurance: 14.4 per-
cent versus 9.4 percent. In an even more dramatic turn-
around, children in families receiving public assistance for
health insurance have recently been 50 percent more likely
than privately insured families to have received an ADHD
diagnosis.
86 ADHD

Added to these factors is the disproportionately high

rate of low-birthweight babies—a risk factor for ADHD—in
low-income families. This regrettably increasing trend is one
reason why we can expect the true prevalence of ADHD (as
well as accompanying diagnoses) to continue to rise in at least
the near future.
As we’ve noted, the rates for Latino Americans remain
lower, on average, although that trend may not last much lon-
ger. The reasons Latinos have delayed in joining the trend are
somewhat murky, but probably at least partly due to both a
continuing widespread lack of health insurance and a lack
of qualified Spanish-speaking physicians. Some researchers
have also chalked up the difference to culture, suggesting that
extended Latino families may be both more tolerant than other
groups of disruptive behavior and less accepting of the stigma
associated with diagnosed mental disorders.

How Much Do Rates of Diagnoses Differ Among US States,

and Why?
Throughout America, rates of ADHD in children and adoles-
cents vary dramatically among different states. Some Western
states have extremely low overall rates of diagnosis—Nevada,
for example, has an average of under 5 percent—compared
with many Southern states, such as Arkansas and Kentucky,
where the rates approach 15 percent. Overall, the South and
Midwest, including the Plains states, register much higher
rates than the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast states. The
same patterns hold true for rates of medication as well. In
many southern states, a child with ADHD will be twice as
likely to receive medication as a child in California.
We told you in Chapter 3 about the strong influence of
modern school policies in pushing up the recent rate of ADHD
diagnosis. In The ADHD Explosion, Hinshaw and his coauthor,
Richard Scheffler, made the case that these policies, including
the increasing use of high-stakes, standardized tests, have been
 How Much Does It Matter Who You Are and Where You Live? 87

the single greatest factor in pushing up America’s recent rates

of ADHD diagnosis, especially among low-income youth. To
underline that point, they offered a case study that compared
California with North Carolina, where a child is nearly three
times as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD.
California, to be sure, has a much larger population of
Latinos than does North Carolina, which certainly helps
explain some of the difference in the sheer numbers of diagno-
ses. But the disparity remained even when the authors adjusted
for that circumstance. Nor, as they found, did the quality or
prevalence of medical care make the difference. It was only
when the authors looked at the difference in public-school
practices that they found the smoking gun.
Although correlation doesn’t guarantee causation, there’s
striking evidence suggesting that the explanation can be
found in the fact that North Carolina, together with 29 other,
mostly southern, states, was an early adopter in the 1990s of
“consequential accountability” policies that tied school fund-
ing to children’s scores on standardized tests. Under these
policies, school districts had to show increases in students’
performance or risk being censured or even closed down.
The schools with the most to lose were public schools that
served high proportions of impoverished students, eligible
for Title I funding and Medicaid. When these policies took
effect, ADHD diagnoses surged in these states, outpacing the
national trend.
Subsequently, during the 2002–2003 school year, these
consequential accountability policies were extended nation-
ally under the federal No Child Left Behind law. As we
might expect, the ADHD rates in the remaining 20 states
increased rapidly over the next 4 years. In fact, for children
from low-income families in public schools that were now for
the first time subject to this threat of defunding, rates rose
nearly 60 percent during that 4-year period. For middle- and
upper-class children from those same states, and for those
children attending private schools (who were not subject to No
88 ADHD

Child Left Behind), the rates of increase of ADHD diagnoses

were dramatically lower.
Coincidence? We think not. Rather, we believe that the new
accountability laws encouraged school staff to subtly or not so
subtly raise the topic of ADHD with the parents of distracted
students, hoping that medication might make the difference
in performance on the test. For a time in some states, a child
with an ADHD diagnosis who was receiving special education
could be exempt from the tests (or his or her scores were not
counted in the district’s average), raising the school’s overall
scores. But that ended when the practice was outlawed.
After 2009, President Obama’s Race to the Top replaced No
Child Left Behind, replacing the former sticks with carrots, but
still tying federal money to school performance. By 2012, the
trend of rapidly increasing ADHD diagnosis for the poorest
children in states with accountability laws began to reverse.

How Much Do Rates of ADHD Vary Among Nations Outside the

United States?
There’s no question that the United States has long been the
world capital of ADHD diagnoses, with by far the highest rate
of prescription medication. Nonetheless, major international
studies suggest the true prevalence of ADHD is strikingly simi-
lar among developed nations. The United States continues to
have the highest rates of diagnostic prevalence, for all the rea-
sons we’ve explained, while the average rate of ADHD diagno-
sis among all other developed nations is just over 5 percent of
the population of children and adolescents.
As we explained in Chapter 4, one likely reason for the
difference is the way we Americans diagnose the disorder,
under the relatively loose criteria of the DSM, compared with
other nations that use the more restrictive guidelines in the
International Classification of Diseases (ICD). In addition, some
nations require that parents and teachers agree on the presence
of a symptom in order for it to count, whereas others require
 How Much Does It Matter Who You Are and Where You Live? 89

only one source. Others require that the child’s problems cause
serious impairment before a diagnosis is made. These sorts of
diagnostic practices, rather than overall national beliefs, are
the key factors making rates of diagnosis higher or lower in a
given country.
What’s striking is that, outside of subsistence nations
(for which ADHD has not yet registered as a concern) and
outside of the United States, with its perhaps artificially
boosted rates of diagnosis, a remarkably similar proportion
of children around the world has clear trouble in handling
the demands of classrooms. This fact lends credence to the
notion that ADHD is a product of both biological vulnerabil-
ity and increasing demands for attention and academic per-
formance. When education becomes mandatory, underlying
differences in self-regulation and impulse control come to the
fore at highly similar levels. ADHD is increasingly a global
phenomenon—and one that we predict will remain in ascen-
dancy as international pressures for academic achievement
and job performance continue to rise.

What are the Implications as ADHD Diagnosis and Medications

Become International Phenomena at Increasing Rates?
ADHD is not solely a biological and cultural reality. In recent
years, it has also become an economic concern. As the push for
performance, in classrooms and on the job, spreads through
the global economy, rising rates of ADHD have inspired con-
cerns about student achievement and workplace productiv-
ity and prompted debate about whether increasing rates of
medication are justified. Residents of different nations have
varied in their response to these questions. Some nations
are emulating the United States in providing medication as
the front-line treatment for ADHD, whereas others remain
resistant. Some nations have instituted school-based accom-
modations for youth with ADHD, whereas others reject this
practice. Particularly intriguing debates are occurring in the
90 ADHD

population-rich and economically expanding nations of China

and India, where academic achievement and vocational pro-
ductivity are paramount—and where rates of ADHD diagno-
sis and medication treatment are expanding rapidly.
At this writing, China almost completely lacks school-based
accommodations for children with learning and atten-
tion problems. Instead, children are expected to accommo-
date to the lecture-based, many-hours-per-day, extremely
high-expectation teaching styles. Diagnosis of ADHD, and
treatment with ADHD medications, may be a seriously dis-
tracted child’s best hope in such circumstances.
Israel presents another example of the consequences of high
expectations for academic performance. For a brief period sev-
eral years ago, Israel allowed stimulant medications to be sold
over the counter without any need for diagnosis of ADHD.
The practice inspired a public backlash, however, and today
only medical specialists are supposed to prescribe medication.

Focusing On: Differences Among Groups

ADHD isn’t what it used to be, in America and the rest of the
world. For many decades, it was widely assumed in the United
States that the disorder was limited mainly to white, subur-
ban boys. Yet in recent years, girls—whose symptoms in gen-
eral have been harder to detect, although over time they lead
to equal or higher rates of impairment—have been catching
up rapidly. Today adult men and women have nearly equal
rates of diagnoses. A similar story pertains to racial minori-
ties and low-income children: Dramatic changes in awareness
and particularly in government policies that provide valu-
able services have led these groups to start catching up to (or
even surpassing) white, affluent youth in terms of diagnoses.
One can clearly see the impact of government policies in his-
toric disparities of diagnoses rates among US states. Regions,
including the South and Midwest, which were first to insti-
tute accountability laws that made school funding dependent
 How Much Does It Matter Who You Are and Where You Live? 91

on performance on standardized tests, have had significantly

higher-than-average rates of ADHD diagnosis—probably
related to efforts to treat the disorder and raise test perfor-
mance. Throughout the world, meanwhile, rising rates of
ADHD diagnosis and treatment have accompanied increasing
pressure for performance at school and on the job. Speaking
of treatment, we’ll now move to the second part of this book, a
tour of the vast and varied landscape of ADHD interventions,
from medication to mindfulness.
 PART II
TAKING ACTION
 7
HOW HELPFUL—OR
HARMFUL—IS MEDICATION?

How Many US Children and Adults are Taking

Medication for ADHD?
In 2015, more than two-thirds of US children and adolescents
diagnosed with ADHD were taking medication. By the most
recent estimates, that works out to be close to 4 million youth.
The vast majority of these children are prescribed stimu-
lants, although other types of medication are also used, as we
describe below. In 2010, pharmaceutical firms sold $7.42 billion
worth of ADHD medications, up from $4.05 billion just 2 years
earlier. Five years later, sales were approaching $10 billion as of
this writing—with projections of $17.5 billion by 2020.
As the number of ADHD diagnoses in America has sky-
rocketed, so has the number of prescriptions. Yet the rate of
children who take medication has remained fairly steady in
recent years, at just above two-thirds of those diagnosed, fol-
lowing a major surge in rates of prescriptions for children
through the 1980s and 1990s.
Meanwhile, the number of US adults taking prescribed
stimulants has quickly risen, to an estimated 3 million by 2015
according to the pharmaceutical company Express Scripts
and other projections. The rates of increase are quite high for
adult prescriptions, which rose by 53% between 2008 and 2012.
An even bigger surprise within this trend is that women of
96 ADHD

child-bearing age have become the fastest-growing group of

consumers of ADHD medications. From 2002 to 2010, the num-
ber of annual prescriptions of generic and brand-name forms
of Adderall, an amphetamine mix that has become the most
popular ADHD remedy, surged among women over 26, from
a total of roughly 800,000 to some 5.4 million. Over that same
period, the number of prescriptions for women aged 26 to 39
soared by 750 percent, which may suggest an increase in abuse
of the medication, as we detail later in this section.

What are the Most Common Stimulant Medications in Use?

Stimulants for ADHD fall into two main categories: amphet-
amines, with brand names that include Dexedrine, Adderall, and
Vyvanse, and methylphenidate, sold under such brand names as
Ritalin, Metadate, Focalin, and Concerta. These two classes of
stimulants account for the great majority of ADHD medica-
tions today. As we'll describe in more detail throughout this
chapter, hundreds of well-controlled investigations—mainly
with children and adolescents—attest to the effectiveness of
such medicines for ADHD. Studies on adults are fewer in num-
ber but also yield clear evidence for stimulant-related benefits.
Another type of medication used mostly for adult ADHD
is buproprion, a combination of an antidepressant and stim-
ulant sold under the brand name of Wellbutrin. In recent
years, some doctors have also been prescribing modafanil
and armodafanil, two closely related vigilance-promoting
drugs, or eugeroics, sold under the brand names of Provigil
and Nuvigil. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
has approved modafinil for treatment of people with narco-
lepsy, shift-work sleep disorder, and excessive daytime sleepi-
ness due to sleep apnea.
Although at this writing neither of these formulas has been
approved for ADHD, a number of doctors have been will-
ing to prescribe them “off-label,” persuaded by evidence that
they can be effective while incurring fewer risks of addiction
 How Helpful—or Harmful—Is Medication? 97

and abuse than the more mainstream stimulants. Three large

studies have shown consistent improvements in children and
adults with ADHD who take modafinil. Nonetheless, in 2006,
an expert panel advised the FDA not to approve the drug on
the grounds that it has a small risk of leading to a potentially
fatal skin condition known as Stevens-Johnson syndrome.
Although the condition is extremely rare, the panel said it was
worth being cautious, given that the risk might increase sub-
stantially if even 10 percent of children taking ADHD medica-
tions switched to modafinil.

When and How Did Doctors First Begin to Treat ADHD

with Medication?
The practice of giving stimulant medications to children diag-
nosed with ADHD symptoms began with a remarkable acci-
dent that took place in the 1930s. At a hospital in Rhode Island,
the pediatrician Charles Bradley and his staff had been using
a device known as a pneumoencephalogram to study children
whose complaints ranged from epilepsy to autistic symptoms
to the mysterious condition involving impulsivity and rest-
lessness then referred to as minimal brain dysfunction (MBD).
The arduous, primitive X-ray procedure required subjects to
have air injected into their spinal columns and then be rotated
about in a specially designed chair. Many of the children in
the study suffered nausea and intense headaches, which the
clinicians treated with Benzedrine, a prescription amphet-
amine. To the researchers’ surprise, the children not only felt
better but also began behaving like little angels, even working
more diligently on their math homework. Bradley’s reports on
this phenomenon led to Benzedrine becoming known as “the
arithmetic pill.”
The publication of these findings, just prior to World War II,
was one of the first twentieth-century instances of a psycho-
tropic medication revealing clear benefits for individuals with
certain forms of mental disorder. Treatment with stimulants
98 ADHD

predated the use of medications for schizophrenia, depression,

bipolar disorder, and most anxiety disorders. Nonetheless, it
was not until the early 1960s, when the FDA approved meth-
ylphenidate (trade name Ritalin), that stimulants began to be
widely used for what was by then variably called “hyperki-
netic impulse control,” “hyperkinetic reaction of childhood,”
or MBD.

How Do Stimulant Medicines Work to Help People with ADHD?

Stimulant medications can't help everyone with ADHD, but
they can improve symptoms in a large majority of children
and adults with the disorder. In fact, research has confirmed
that stimulant medications can help improve symptoms in 80
or more out of 100 people diagnosed with ADHD, with no dis-
cernible difference in response between boys and girls or men
or women, or between members of different racial groups.
The stimulants boost brainpower, including focus, motiva-
tion, and self-control, by increasing the availability of cer-
tain of the brain’s neurotransmitters—chiefly dopamine and
norepinephrine. They can’t cure ADHD, but they can reduce
symptoms while the medication is active in one’s bloodstream
and brain.
Brain-scan studies have shown that taking stimulants
increases the efficiency of the actions of dopamine and nor-
epinephrine in key brain regions and pathways that are essen-
tial for self-control, the sensation of reward, and the ability to
focus —in other words, the fundamental areas of weakness in
people with ADHD. The ADHD expert Thomas E. Brown, at
the Yale University School of Medicine, says the medications
counter the typical ADHD-related resistance to “motivating
oneself to do necessary, but not intrinsically interesting tasks.”
For a more detailed picture of how this happens, let's go
back to that picture we first described in Chapter 3, of our
brains as composed of neurons, or nerve cells. Separating
these cells are tiny gaps called synapses. The neurons relay
 How Helpful—or Harmful—Is Medication? 99

information through the brain via chemical neurotransmit-

ters which travel across the synapses. For this process to work
effectively, the neurons must produce and release sufficient
amounts of the neurotransmitters, which then must stay in the
synapse long enough to react with the receptor molecules of
the next neuron in the chain.
After the neurotransmitters are released into the synapse,
the excess or unused portion is normally reabsorbed by the
neuron that produced it. This work is done by molecules called
transporters, through a process called reuptake. Stimulants, both
methylphenidate and amphetamines, block the transporters,
slowing down the reabsorption of the neurotransmitters, and
thus enhancing their actions on the next neuron in the chain.
The two different types of stimulants work in slightly dif-
ferent ways, and some people respond better to one type than
the other. Amphetamines are more potent than the methyl-
phenidate formulas, as they not only block the transporters
but also increase the release of neurotransmitters from their
storage sites into the synapses. They also make the receptor
molecules more sensitive to these chemical messengers.
Because people with ADHD vary greatly in terms of which
medication may help them the most, doctors will often need
to try out one or two or even more different formulas before
finding the best match.
Preschoolers generally respond positively to ADHD medi-
cations, although not as strongly as older children and teens.
More troublesome, however, is that this age group is more
likely to suffer side-effects, which we describe below. For these
reasons, US medical professional guidelines recommend try-
ing behavior therapies for preschoolers before resorting to
medication.
A resounding confirmation of the upside of stimulant med-
ication came in 1999, with the first published results from the
$12 million Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with
ADHD. This unprecedented and much-ballyhooed landmark
study, known as the MTA, found that medication was more
100 ADHD

effective than behavior therapy in reducing ADHD symptoms

in children—and was nearly as beneficial as a combination of
the two. However, as we elaborate later, additional research
has suggested that when it comes to helping children fare bet-
ter in school and socially, medication alone is not nearly as
effective as a combination of medication and intensive behav-
ior therapy (see Chapter 8).
A common question when the talk turns to stimulants is,
Why can't I just drink coffee? Caffeine, after all, is a mild stimu-
lant that can in some circumstances improve focus. The prob-
lem is that caffeine (and other methylxanthines, the class of drug
to which it belongs) is both less potent than amphetamines or
methylphenidate and more likely to cause jitters at doses that
are truly effective. Its effects don’t last long, either. It’s better
than a placebo, but no panacea.
Another popular misconception is that stimulants work in
different ways for people with and without ADHD. Yet in a
pioneering study conducted during 1970s, the eminent child
psychiatrist Judith Rappaport performed a trial in which pre-
adolescent boys without ADHD took Dexedrine (the trade name
for dextroamphetamine) for a week. In this placebo-controlled
investigation, the boys who took the medication showed sig-
nificantly better attention and less random physical activity.
In other words, the trial showed that a stimulant can provide
a small benefit for “neurotypical” children, with larger for
effects for children with ADHD.
As we’ve noted earlier, people with low dopamine activ-
ity, including those with ADHD, are underaroused much
of the time, and may fidget, seek excitement, or even pick a
fight to “wake up” their brains. The stimulants, by promoting
the actions of dopamine the actions of dopamine and other
chemical messengers in the brain, help to promote arousal
and alertness, self-control, and a sense of reward. Probably
the most serious common misconception about the stimulants
is that they turn children into little robots or “zombies,” fos-
tering compliance on rote, boring tasks and making unruly
 How Helpful—or Harmful—Is Medication? 101

children sit still in dreary classrooms while failing to boost

learning. The evidence from considerable research contradicts
this assertion. It’s certainly true that stimulants make it eas-
ier to plow through dull tasks and can improve performance
on tests—even raising grades—by increasing the number of
academic problems attempted and completed correctly. Yet
researchers have also found evidence that they help boost
working memory, and even, under the right circumstances,
improve complex and creative thinking in children and adults
with ADHD. In other words, at their best, they do more than
simply keep someone awake to do nonchallenging work.

What are the Chief Pharmaceutical Alternatives to

Stimulant Medications?
The FDA has approved two types of medications as alterna-
tives to stimulants for treating ADHD. One is atomoxetine,
a selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI), sold
under the brand name Strattera. Similarly to prescribed stim-
ulants, atomoxetine energizes the brain’s frontal lobes, which
are responsible for self-control but do not mature at the same
rates in children and adolescents with ADHD as they do in
youth without the disorder (see Chapter 3). Because atomox-
etine has little or no effect on dopamine, it doesn't carry the
same risk for abuse. At the same time, and although research
has shown that its benefits far outweigh those of a placebo, it
generally isn't as effective as stimulants, on average. Its major
effect is to improve impulse control by blocking the reuptake
of norepinephrine.
The second group of nonstimulant ADHD medications con-
sist of blood pressure medications that work in different ways
to boost the influence of norepinephrine in the brain and body.
These include clonidine, under the brand name Catapres, and
guanfacine, marketed as Estulic, Tenex, and in the extended
release form as Intuniv. Both have been shown to help improve
focus and self-control for people with ADHD who may have
102 ADHD

trouble tolerating stimulants. These latter medications are also

sometimes used in combination with stimulants, to help peo-
ple with ADHD who have difficulty when the stimulants wear
off at the end of the day without impairing their sleep.

What are the Side Effects of ADHD Medications?

Like all medicines, stimulants produce side effects. The
boosted influence of dopamine supports alertness and wake-
fulness, a desired goal when you need to study for hours on
end but a problem when you need to sleep. In other words,
a common side effect of these medications is loss of sleep,
behooving clinicians to carefully monitor the dosage lev-
els and timing of doses. Stimulants also commonly sup-
press appetite, which is why they used to be prescribed as
diet pills. Mild stomachaches and headaches are fairly com-
mon, particularly as the body first adjusts to the medication.
Stimulants affect the peripheral nervous system, slightly
speeding up heart rates and lifting blood pressure by a few
points. People with histories of cardiac problems need to be
monitored closely when taking these medications. For grow-
ing children who take pills over long time periods, ADHD
medications may reduce their ultimate height by as much as
an inch, probably because excess dopamine activity slows
down release of growth hormone. Recent research has pro-
duced mixed findings about the duration of this impact, with
some studies showing growth suppressed only temporar-
ily and others revealing a more persistent effect, at least in
some cases.
The most common side effects of stimulants, including loss
of appetite and sleeplessness, often diminish after the first few
weeks that someone takes the medication, particularly if doc-
tors work with families and adult patients to calculate optimal
formulas, dosages, and timing.
At higher than normal doses, the stimulants can have serious
consequences including obsessive behavior, hallucinations,
 How Helpful—or Harmful—Is Medication? 103

and delusions. We discuss the potential for abuse of these

medications later in this chapter.
The most common (yet still relatively rare) reported side
effects for modafinil are headaches, nausea, nervousness, rhi-
nitis, diarrhea, back pain, anxiety, insomnia, dizziness, and
dyspepsia. Those for atomoxetine include trouble sleeping,
dry mouth, decreased appetite, upset stomach, nausea or vom-
iting, dizziness, problems urinating, and problems with sex-
ual function. Clonidine and guanfacine users have reported
dry mouth, dizziness, drowsiness, constipation, and fatigue.
Women who are pregnant should take special care when
using any medication and always first check with their doc-
tor. The potential effects of stimulants during pregnancy have
not been well studied, but some animal studies suggest that
stimulant exposure in utero may lead to behavioral and even
neurological problems in the offspring. Erring on the side of
caution, doctors agree in most cases that it is best for preg-
nant women to avoid taking stimulants. Yet in the rare cases
where a pregnant woman’s ADHD symptoms are truly severe,
the clinician must balance the risks to the fetus of exposure
to stimulants versus other risks from the mother’s impulsive
behavior, such as dangerous driving.

Can Taking Powerful Stimulant Medications at a Young Age

Harm a Developing Brain?
As ever more and ever younger American children are being
diagnosed with ADHD and treated with medication, parents
and others have grown concerned over the pills’ long-term
impact. Some small studies have raised alarms about potential
harm from stimulants, with alleged dangers including threats
of heart attacks, cancer, depression, and damage to DNA. One
by one, however, these studies have been refuted by other,
larger investigations. Heart attack risks were found in only
a tiny minority of children who had preexisting heart prob-
lems, whereas concerns about cancer, depression, and DNA
104 ADHD

have been debunked by more thorough and careful research.

Animal studies suggesting that stimulants could promote later
dependence on other medications or drugs turned out to have
used different methods from standard clinical treatment of
human patients. Specifically, rodents were injected with much
higher than normal doses, contrasting with the oral doses of
stimulants given to children.
The bottom line is that leading ADHD experts today believe
that there’s no persuasive evidence to date that taking stimu-
lants for ADHD over the long run causes any harm to brains
of people with the disorder. In fact, a few prominent research-
ers have recently gone so far as to suggest that rather than
harming the brain in its formative years, stimulants given for
ADHD may be "neuroprotective": improving the brain over
the long term. Some studies, in fact, have found that on aver-
age, youth with ADHD who have taken stimulants for several
years have larger brain volumes than those who have never
been medicated. (Remember, from Chapter 3, that important
brain structures in people with ADHD are on average smaller
than those of their counterparts.)
It’s important to note, however, that other experts specializ-
ing in ADHD, brain scans, and medication contend that claims
of long-range positive impacts from the pills on the brain have
not been proven. For one thing, the studies cited to support the
“neuroprotective” argument haven’t relied on gold-standard
research methods. Such research would require people with
ADHD to be randomly assigned for several years to groups
receiving either medication or a placebo, during which time
they would have periodic brain scans. These trials would
deprive some children of a treatment with established benefits
and thus be considered unethical.

What are the “Ritalin Wars”?

As the use of stimulant medications skyrocketed in many
regions of the United States, beginning in the late 1960s
 How Helpful—or Harmful—Is Medication? 105

and 1970s, so did related public controversies. On one

side—insisting the meds were both safe and effective—were
many leading ADHD experts, many doctors treating the disor-
der, and teachers and principals who had seen positive impacts
on students and in their classrooms. By the 1980s, national
advocacy groups such as Children and Adults with Attention
Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD)—the nation’s largest
self-help and advocacy group for ADHD—were also champi-
oning the medications.
Challenging this perspective and raising concerns about
the safety and need for the medications, however, was a
diverse group of critics including many thoughtful experts
and doctors and conscientious parents. This side of the dis-
pute also included adherents to a school of thought sometimes
described as “psychopharmacologic Calvinism,” involving the
idea that the only mental-health gains worth making are those
hard-won through intensive individual or family efforts, in or
out of therapy. Proponents of this view argue that medications
are a quick fix that may temporarily relieve symptoms without
solving the basic problems.
The conflict would probably have never been called a war
without the inflammatory and misinformed role of a radical
contingent of opponents including the Church of Scientology
and its front group, the Citizens Commission on Human
Rights, which fervently oppose the entire profession of psy-
chiatry. These groups have campaigned against nearly all
psychotropic medications and in 1988 helped fuel a spate of
negative press about ADHD medications that led to a tempo-
rary nationwide dip in prescriptions and sales. The rebel psy-
chiatrist Peter Breggin, author of Talking Back to Ritalin: What
Doctors Aren’t Telling You About Stimulants for Children, fanned
the flames, saying the meds turned children into “zombies.”
In 2001, Breggin was interviewed on PBS, where he said the
meds facilitate “the smooth functioning of overstressed fami-
lies and schools.… It’s about having submissive children who
will sit in a boring classroom of thirty, often with teachers who
106 ADHD

don’t know how to use visual aids and all the other exciting
technologies that kids are used to.” Around the same time, the
Citizens Commission on Human Rights helped spur plaintiff’s
lawyers to file half a dozen class-action suits in at least three
states against psychiatrists and pharmaceutical firms. Yet all
of these suits had been dismissed by 2003.
The ADHD advocacy group CHADD came under fire in the
Ritalin Wars on the grounds that it had heavily relied on finan-
cial support from pharmaceutical firms. In 2000, plaintiffs in
one of the civil cases that was ultimately dismissed named
CHADD as a co-conspirator, along with the pharmaceutical
firm Novartis and the American Psychiatric Association, in a
scheme to “invent and promote” the diagnosis of ADHD so the
drug companies could profit from stimulant sales. In recent
years, leaders of CHADD have been sensitive to the charges
against it. Although the advocacy group continues to sup-
port medication as a front-line treatment, it has taken pains to
diversify its sources of contributions while also more energeti-
cally educating its members about alternatives to medication.

How Long Do Medication Benefits Last?

This is a key question. Recall that in the MTA study described
above, scientists discovered that medications outperformed
behavior therapy in relieving ADHD symptoms during
the active phase of treatment, which lasted one and a quar-
ter years. But during the first year after the treatment phase
ended, this advantage tapered to about half its initial effect.
After the passage of an additional year, the initial superiority
of medication had vanished. In other words, children in all of
the randomly assigned treatments were better off than before,
but medication did not maintain its initial edge over behavior
therapy. Over another dozen years of follow-up, this trend of
essentially equivalent improvement has persisted.
The investigators themselves have conceded that they have
more questions than answers about these outcomes. Was it
 How Helpful—or Harmful—Is Medication? 107

that children had stopped taking their medications? (Many

indeed had, but this did not tell the whole story.) Had the
standards of their treatment deteriorated after they left the
rigorous monitoring of the study and returned to their local
doctors, who were far less likely to frequently check up on
them and adjust dosages? (Probably.) Or were the medica-
tions’ impacts simply wearing off, at least for some of the kids,
as their brains became more tolerant of the boosted influence
of dopamine? (This hypothesis still needs more confirmation,
but it does appear that for at least some people with ADHD,
medications lose their effectiveness over a period of several
years. A possible explanation is that over time, as they allow
more dopamine to engage with neural receptors, the receptors
become less sensitive.)
The follow-up results have received only a fraction of the
fanfare surrounding the initial, more optimistic view of the
benefits of medication. But their main implication can’t be
ignored: Although it seems clear that medications can help
reduce symptoms in the short run (and maybe over periods of
several years), they aren’t a panacea and may not be a sustain-
able solution for all people with ADHD over the course of a
lifetime. For the best results, skill-building approaches should
be added from the start, although, alas, the US healthcare sys-
tem rarely subsidizes this optimum combination.

Why Do So Many Teens with ADHD Stop Taking their Medicine?

Researchers have found that American youth on average take
their ADHD medications for no longer than 18 months. It’s a
rule that applies not only to clinically distracted teens but also
to people with many other chronic conditions, both psychiat-
ric and medical. Over the long run, inertia often wins, which
is surely at least a contributing factor to the long-term weak-
ness of a medication-only treatment plan. Furthermore many
people with a variety of chronic physical or mental condi-
tions find it emotionally difficult to keep up with a treatment
108 ADHD

that’s a daily reminder of such illnesses and the stigma that

surrounds them.
Even so, it’s particularly hard for adolescents to stay on
their ADHD meds, such that the rates of medication use drop
dramatically during the teen years. Teenagers are famously
sensitive to other people’s judgment and anxious to fit in with
their peers. Many adolescents also say they dislike the sensa-
tion of being medicated, which makes them feel constricted,
as opposed to spontaneous, creative, and fun. This presents a
thorny problem for the teens’ doctors and families, given that
these years present new dangers, including the risks involved
in driving and dating, while schoolwork becomes ever more
demanding en route to college applications.

How Should Doctors Monitor Treatment with Medications?

It often takes a good deal of time and experimentation to
find the right pill and dose for each person. As noted above,
many diagnosed patients have intolerable side effects with
the first medication they try, even though there’s an excellent
chance that a different medication (or different dosage level)
may work. Yet some people can’t tolerate stimulants at all and
need to try a nonstimulant medication. In the first few weeks
of testing a new medication, doctors should keep in close
touch with their patients and schedule frequent follow-up
appointments. Patients and parents of children who receive
the medication can help themselves considerably by keep-
ing a medication log to note the size of the dose, time of the
dose, benefits, and side effects. Maintaining such records can
aid family members and clinicians alike during follow-up
appointments.
Once the right formula is found, the dose may need to
be adjusted. The initial dose is usually set according to the
patient’s age and weight, and then raised or lowered depend-
ing on feedback from parents and teachers. The best plan is
to systematically try a couple of different dosages, obtaining
 How Helpful—or Harmful—Is Medication? 109

teacher ratings several times per week and using that feedback
to help make adjustments.
We emphasize this point because there’s little way of know-
ing in advance which particular medication and dosage will
work for any particular individual. Scientists have been trying
for years to make such predictions, but to date there’s simply
no good substitute for trial-and-error testing. In fact, if a par-
ticular laboratory comes up with a means of using assessment
information (about genes, behavior, cognitive performance,
or something else) that could accurately predict who would
respond to which medication and which dose, our suggestion
is to invest in it—because this would be a major discovery. At
present, the best we have is systematic trial and error.
As children grow, they may gradually need higher dosages.
And sometimes medications lose their initial effectiveness,
requiring adjustments. For drugs of abuse, tolerance occurs
when—over short periods of, say, just a few days—the dosage
must be raised in order to obtain the same “high”. Although
this phenomenon does not pertain to therapeutic doses of stim-
ulants for people with ADHD, a slower form of tolerance may
lead, over many months or years, to gradually increasing dos-
ages (in order to maintain initial gains in behavior or cognitive
performance) that ultimately can no longer be sustained. It’s
one more reason why we strongly recommend behavior ther-
apy for children with ADHD (and cognitive-behavior therapy
for adults) as a supplement or substitute for medication (see
Chapter 8).
A doctor can help a family decide whether a short-acting
medication (lasting a maximum of 4 hours) or a long-acting
one (lasting up to approximately 10 hours, depending on the
formula and individual) will work best. Some children have
problems sleeping when they take the longer-acting medica-
tions, but for many others, the advantages of not needing a
noontime or after-school dose are enormous. Doctors may
also advise families on how and when to take the medication.
Given that stimulants can depress a child’s appetite, many
110 ADHD

parents make sure to provide a large breakfast before the pill

is taken, and then delay dinner and even offer a bedtime snack
to make up for a half-eaten (at best) lunch.
Conscientious doctors will also weigh in on whether the
stimulants should be taken all seven days of the week or only
on schooldays. On the one hand, medications can help chil-
dren focus during after-school sports and homework, and
for quarrelsome kids, help keep the family peace. But many
ADHD experts recommend that children take a break from
the medications on weekends, or at least on Sundays, as well
as during holidays and summer vacation, in part to make up
for any lost growth.
Ideally, doctors should schedule appointments more fre-
quently than once every 6 months or a year. In the MTA study,
researchers held weekly visits for the first month, to establish
the appropriate dosage, and then scheduled half-hour meet-
ings once per month to meet with the parents and child, while
also receiving regular reports from the child’s teachers. The
MTA doctors also made sure to spend time with the child with-
out the parents in the room for part of the monthly session, to
allow the child to speak more freely about his or her attitudes
toward the medication. To be sure, this gold-standard schedule
unfortunately won’t be reimbursed by most insurance plans.
Yet without relatively frequent and meaningful visits with your
doctor—and by this we mean certainly more frequent than 10
minutes twice a year—the chances of success will be limited.

How Can Patients Improve their Chances of Effective

Medication Treatment?
The best first step is to ask for help from your regular doctor,
who may recommend a specialist. If you're a parent of a child
with ADHD, you're likely to confront an unfortunate dearth
of US child and adolescent psychiatrists, meaning that if you
want to go that route, you will likely have to wait what could
be a long time for an appointment—and/or pay a premium.
 How Helpful—or Harmful—Is Medication? 111

Remember that although nonmedical mental health pro-

fessionals may diagnose ADHD, in all but just a few US states
only a medical doctor, such as an internist, pediatrician, or
psychiatrist, can prescribe medication. Once you or your
child is diagnosed, you may want to continue to see the doc-
tor for prescription checks while also meeting regularly with
a psychologist or social worker for behavior therapy—and
working with the child’s school to implement educational
interventions.
You may have to shop around to find someone right for you.
Take the time you need. ADHD can take a lifetime to manage.
Expect this to be a long-term partnership.
One caveat: Beware of doctors with a lot of pharmaceutical-
firm marketing swag in their offices, such as pens, clocks, and
calendars bearing the names of stimulants. You’re looking
for someone informed and skillful but not unquestioningly
gung-ho or with a conflict of interest.

How Might Taking ADHD Medication Influence Later Risk for

Substance Abuse?
Many researchers have tackled this important question,
although at this writing, there’s no clear answer amid plenty
of conflicting theories. Some experts argue that prescribing
medications for behavioral issues teaches youth that pills are
a suitable way of coping with life problems. Others worry that
the stimulant’s action on the reward centers of the brain might
precondition patients to become addicted in later life. After
weighing the evidence, we believe it’s reasonable to suspect
that the beneficial effects of medication early on, including the
higher likelihood of scholastic and social success, could ulti-
mately help kids avoid risky drug use as teens.
The main reason we still lack good answers to this question
is that it’s too problematic for a trustworthy randomized test.
As we’ve noted above, such a test would require researchers to
deprive a group of children with ADHD, for years on end, of
112 ADHD

medication that could possibly help them, and thus risk being
unethical.
As an alternative, some researchers have tried to find and
study groups of children with ADHD who for one reason or
another have either stayed on medication for long periods of
time or have never used it. The difficulty with this “naturalis-
tic” research is it’s nearly impossible to adequately match such
groups on variables such as intelligence, academic perfor-
mance, access to quality medical care, and severity of ADHD
symptoms. Thorny questions therefore emerge, such as
whether a child who took medications for many years did so
because his or her symptoms were initially quite severe. If he
or she then ended up with a substance abuse problem, it would
be impossible to tell whether this outcome resulted from the
medications or the severity of his or her initial problems.
Regardless of such obstacles, several different researchers
have attempted such comparisons, producing findings sug-
gesting that taking ADHD medications neither increases nor
decreases later risk for substance use and abuse. This overall
finding probably results from averaging together results from
two (or more) subgroups—one for which a protective benefit
truly exists and another in which the medications actually
could sensitize the brain to later misuse. Further research will
be essential to figure out which particular kinds of youth with
ADHD fit into each subgroup.

How Likely is it that People Who Take ADHD Medications Will

Become Dependent on Them or Abuse Them?
The danger of dependency is frankly a tricky question.
The issue has not been well studied, again because of the
problems of performing long-term experimental research
on medications versus placebos. The American Society of
Health-System Pharmacists has warned that even when
taken as prescribed, the medications can be “habit-forming.”
Yet some research suggests that the danger of psychological
 How Helpful—or Harmful—Is Medication? 113

dependency may be low. Specifically, when scientists com-

pared groups of children diagnosed with ADHD who took
pills with those who took placebos, they found that the youth
who took the pills attributed their improved behavior to their
personal efforts.
Researchers have also found evidence that stimulant abuse
is not a major threat for people with ADHD. For one thing,
people with ADHD rarely feel a euphoric high from the
stimulants. Instead, and possibly due to their distinct genetic
makeup, the medication usually makes them feel subdued, as
it works to inhibit impulsivity. This is intriguing, considering
that people without ADHD are more likely to experience a high
on stimulants. Furthermore, it’s often necessary to crush and
snort or inject the stimulant medications, as with cocaine, to
feel such an effect, and in recent years, the ADHD medication
market has been dominated by long-acting formulas, which
are designed to be crush-proof.

How Much of a Problem is Abuse of ADHD Medications Among

People Who Don’t Have the Disorder?
This is a cause for concern. In recent years, stimulant medi-
cations prescribed for ADHD have acquired a reputation as
“smart pills” that can improve productivity and performance
for nearly everyone, in school and in the office. Surveys and
other estimates show that increasing numbers of people with-
out the disorder, including college students and many stu-
dents still in high school, take the medication to finish term
papers, cram for tests, and stay alert through boring lectures
or routine office work.
In a controversial 2009 editorial in the eminent scientific
journal Nature, seven leading bioethicists and neuroscientists
advocated the use of performance-boosting drugs, arguing
that “cognitive enhancement has much to offer individuals
and society and a proper societal response will involve mak-
ing enhancements available while managing their risks.” Alas,
114 ADHD

to date, we haven’t done a good job at all in managing those

considerable risks.
We’re all for cognitive enhancement, in principle. One
immediate problem, however, is that although it’s certainly
true that prescription stimulants can help people both with
and without ADHD to stay awake and alert longer, the ben-
efits in terms of memory and learning don’t seem to be shared.
Careful research has shown that for people without ADHD,
stimulant effects on learning, in particular, are very small or
nil. There is evidence, in fact, that students who abuse pre-
scription stimulants have lower GPAs in high school and col-
lege than those who don’t. For people with highly developed
attention and focus in the first place, stimulant medications
may actually hamper learning, and in extreme cases lead to
obsessive behavior such as overfocusing and a decrease in
flexible thinking. This is on top of the potentially harmful
physical effects, such as a risk for heart problems.
At the same time, the much bigger problem for people
without ADHD is a considerably greater risk of abuse and
addiction. As we’ve explained above, the medication can
provide a euphoric high for people without ADHD, espe-
cially when it is crushed and snorted or injected. But even
in pill form, there’s a much higher chance of addiction and
dependence for people without ADHD than for those with
the disorder. The best estimates are that between 10 percent
and 15 percent of the general population who take ADHD
medications illegally will become addicted. This is a far
higher rate than for those with the disorder, which appears
to be under 1 percent.
The risks of abuse and addiction have multiplied as the
rapidly rising numbers of ADHD diagnoses and prescriptions
have created an ample supply of stimulants to be traded among
friends or sold to strangers. The greatest rates of abuse continue
to be found on college campuses, where students use the meds
to study—and sometimes party—harder. Dee Owens, director
of the Alcohol/Drug Information Center at Indiana University,
 How Helpful—or Harmful—Is Medication? 115

has told us that Adderall abuse has become “epidemic among

young ladies” who are trying to keep their grades up and their
weight down and to drink more beer without falling asleep. In
widely varying estimates of this illegal trend, researchers have
found that as many as 30 percent of college students without
ADHD have used stimulants as study aids.
Even more worrisome, however—in what the National
Institute on Drug Abuse has called a “cause for alarm”—abuse
of prescription stimulants is also becoming more prevalent
in high school. An institute survey of 45,000 students found
abuse of stimulants had increased among high school seniors,
from 6.6 percent to 8.2 percent from 2010 to 2012. In one recent
high school newspaper survey of public high school students
in affluent Marin County, California, 10 percent of the fresh-
man and 40 percent of the seniors admitted to having used
diverted stimulants.
As increasing numbers of youth, adults, and especially
women of child-bearing use the stimulants to boost their pro-
ductivity, reports of addiction are increasing. Statistics sug-
gest this is an especially tempting trap for young, exhausted,
multitasking mothers. Several years ago, the television show
Desperate Housewives portrayed the risk in an episode in which
a mother played by the actress Felicity Huffman tried her kids’
Ritalin to help her finish making costumes for the school per-
formance of “Little Red Riding Hood.”
Like the Huffman character, many women start out by sam-
pling their children’s meds. (It’s worth noting here that selling
or giving away prescription stimulants is a felony.) Then they
get prescriptions of their own, sometimes by faking ADHD
symptoms or find the pills by more underhanded means. The
human toll of this expanding abuse can be seen in the fact
that emergency department visits for stimulant-related com-
plications, including heart problems and psychosis, went up
300 percent between 2005 and 2011 in the United States.
In short, the belief that stimulants can be effective neuroen-
hancers for people without ADHD is not only misguided but a
116 ADHD

potential menace to public health, given the dangers of abuse

and addiction.

How Do Other Countries Compare with the United States in

Medication Prescriptions for ADHD?
As recently as the year 2000, the United States was by far the
world champion of ADHD medication prescriptions, home to
more than 90 percent of world sales volume. Since then, how-
ever, other nations have been quickly starting to catch up, with
rates of increase in the use of ADHD meds far in excess of
ours. While global sales of ADHD medications rose on average
by 20 percent per year from 2005 to 2013, they rose 30 percent
annually outside the United States. As an extreme example, in
Israel, where awareness of ADHD has been growing dramati-
cally in recent years, the use of two stimulants, Ritalin and
Concerta, skyrocketed by 76 percent in 2010 alone.
There are various reasons for this new trend. For one thing,
pharmaceutical firms are ramping up their international mar-
keting efforts after having essentially saturated the US market
for children and adolescents with ADHD. In Saudi Arabia, for
instance, Janssen, which makes Concerta, is the sole spon-
sor of a website and Facebook page for the Saudi ADHD
Society (AFTA), aimed at increasing awareness and treatment
of the disorder. A greeting message on the Facebook page
says: “ADHD meds help the brain work effectively; they don’t
make kids zombies. If they do, you should see your Dr. imme-
diately to change meds/dose!”
Moreover, pressures for academic and vocational perfor-
mance are growing throughout the industrialized world. As
we noted earlier, China, in particular, is increasingly pres-
suring students to improve achievement on tests, even as its
schools offer few or no US-style supports for children with
learning or attention handicaps. Medication in such cases may
be the only resort for students trying to stay alert during rou-
tine lectures and classwork.
 How Helpful—or Harmful—Is Medication? 117

As a general rule, wealthier nations with higher rates of

productivity have higher rates of ADHD prescriptions. Yet
a few exceptions exist. Some industrialized nations have
policies restricting the kinds of medical professionals who
can prescribe such medications. Indeed, even though rates
of ADHD diagnosis are remarkably similar internationally
(except for the higher rates within the United States), rates of
treatment vary—often drastically—as a function of a nation’s
culture, attitudes, economics, history, and levels of stigma.
Brazil, for instance, has traditionally had extremely low rates
of diagnosis and medication treatment for ADHD, which some
experts attribute to that nation’s bitter experience with the use
of forced psychiatric medications in earlier, repressive political
regimes. France, too, has until recently shown extremely low
ADHD diagnoses and rates of medication treatment, largely
because psychoanalytic theory remains more popular than
treatment by medication.

Focusing On: Medication

The most recent US surveys reveal that nearly 4 million
children take medication for ADHD, representing more
than two-thirds of all diagnosed children. The net numbers
of children and adults taking medication for ADHD have
been rising rapidly in recent years, with young women the
fastest-growing segment of the market. The most common
medications prescribed are stimulants—methylphenidate or
amphetamines—although doctors prescribe nonstimulant
medications for a minority of people who have the disorder.
Stimulants work by helping the brain process two important
neurotransmitters: dopamine and norepinephrine. Medication
can be a highly effective first-line treatment, but for a variety of
reasons, the initial benefits don’t last over time in many cases,
making other therapeutic strategies all the more important.
Evidence suggests that taking stimulant medications does not
increase the risk for abuse of other substances in later years,
118 ADHD

for people with legitimate diagnoses of ADHD. Moreover, the

dangers of stimulant addiction for people with ADHD who
take the medications are minor, although this is not true for the
general population. The use and abuse of ADHD stimulants
as “smart drugs” has grown alarmingly in recent years, even
as the actual benefits in terms of focus and learning for those
without ADHD appear to be quite small. America remains the
leader of the world market in stimulants, but as pressures to
achieve more in school and on the job spread internationally,
other nations are beginning to catch up.
A word of caution here: No matter where you live, make
sure you take ADHD medications only under a doctor’s super-
vision. Don’t fall into the trap of boosting your dose without
consultation. And whether or not you have ADHD, get help
right away if you catch yourself lying about your use or get-
ting prescriptions from more than one doctor.
 8
HOW HELPFUL IS BEHAVIOR
THERAPY, AND WHAT KINDS
OF BEHAVIOR THERAPIES
HELP THE MOST?

What is Behavior Therapy?

Behavior therapy is the only form of treatment besides medi-
cation that researchers have found to be consistently helpful
for children and adolescents with ADHD. It can be effective
as a substitute for or supplement to medication. Which type
of the many different therapies available might be right for
your family will depend on factors including the severity and
kinds of symptoms involved, your personal tastes and will-
ingness to invest money and time, and, of course, the skills of
the therapist.
For the most part, behavior strategies don’t involve the ste-
reotypical image of psychotherapy as one-on-one conversa-
tions with a psychiatrist, psychologist, or social worker. With
the exception of cognitive-behavior therapy for late adoles-
cents and adults, which we describe below, behavior therapy
focuses instead on a child's interactions and relationships in
his or her daily life, at home and in school. In this case, the
therapist’s direct clients are parents and teachers, who are
coached in the art of using the tools of clear expectations and
explicit, frequent rewards, as well as occasional, nonemotional
120 ADHD

discipline. These incentives work in a somewhat similar way

as do the ADHD medications, providing neural reinforcement
that helps boost the child’s flagging dopamine system.
Finding the right program and therapist is crucial—and
tricky. Unfortunately and ironically, our medical system oper-
ates under the assumption that in the thick of a life crisis, you’ll
be able to calmly use your intuition, judgment, and research
skills to find the best course of action. Although the system
isn’t exactly rigged against you, it’s not set up to offer maxi-
mum support. This is obvious even from the fact that whereas
most insurance companies readily cover medication for those
diagnosed with ADHD, few will reimburse you for behavior
therapy. Another big problem is that as a general rule, skilled
behavior therapists for ADHD are few and far between.
Below, we’ll describe six different types of behavior therapy,
some of which can be combined for the best results. Again, the
reward-based behavior therapies work best for children and
adolescents, while cognitive-behavior therapy is most appro-
priate for adults.

What is Direct Contingency Management?

Direct contingency management is a particularly intensive
program of behavior modification, in which the daily life of
a child with acute symptoms is monitored and managed. It
takes place in special classrooms, summer camps, or resi-
dential treatment programs, with the settings engineered to
immediately reinforce progress, often with points or stickers
that can later be traded for coveted goods or privileges.
Several behavioral principles should govern these pro-
grams. First, the behaviors that are targets for change should
be specific (“make the bed” vs. “clean up”), making it easier
to recognize progress. Second, the reinforcement should be
immediate—that is, adults must put stickers on the sticker
chart as soon as they witness such progress, rather than wait-
ing. Third, adults must make sure that the children are willing
 What Kinds of Behavior Therapies Help the Most? 121

to work for the rewards being offered, meaning that kids must
be consulted regarding the choice of rewards. Such reinforcers
need not cost a lot of money: Some children will work hard
just to be able to choose a movie to watch. On the other hand,
teenagers usually don’t respond well to reward charts—in this
case it’s better to negotiate in advance how progress will be
recognized. Fourth, as emphasized throughout this chapter,
it’s important to keep expectations low at first, handing out
rewards for what might seem like small improvements and
then building from there.
Direct contingency management programs outside of the
home are usually expensive, due to the small staff-to-youth
ratios needed for such regular reinforcement. They have been
proven to work well in the short term for youth with ADHD,
who lack the intrinsic motivation to finish routine tasks and
maintain self-control. Yet the difficulty for children is to
maintain their progress once they’re out of the tightly man-
aged environment. In fact, this crucial issue about direct con-
tingency management exemplifies a sticking point regarding
every therapeutic intervention for ADHD, including both
medication and behavior therapy. Both young and older
people with ADHD generally have trouble maintaining the
gains they can and do make, once the last pill is swallowed
or the last reward is delivered. In the case of children, this is
what makes it so important for behavior therapists to work
closely with families and teachers, training them to keep up a
reward-rich environment after the formal therapy ends—and
fading out the reward programs only gradually, once intrinsic
motivation is apparent.

What Can You Expect from Parent-Training Programs?

Parent training (sometimes called parent management) is the
most well-researched behavioral treatment for ADHD. It can
help restore peace in conflict-torn families and teach parents
how to keep their wits together when dealing with children
122 ADHD

and adolescents who often seem to be experts in pushing but-

tons and challenging every limit. Still, like that joke about
how many psychiatrists it takes to change a light bulb (just
one, but the light bulb really has to want to change), this route
requires a willingness to keep an open mind and to work hard
to change bad habits that may stem from the parent’s own
childhood.
To emphasize a key point: Parenting children with ADHD
is no walk in the park. Two ADHD experts, Edward Hallowell
and Peter Jensen, base their book Superparenting for ADD on
their belief that parents must provide distracted children
with heroic amounts of unconditional love, extra support,
and opportunities to excel. On the darker side, psychologist
Russell Barkley has eloquently noted that parents of a child
with ADHD

will find themselves having to supervise, monitor,

teach, organize, plan, structure, reward, punish, guide,
buffer, protect, and nurture their child far more than
is demanded of a typical parent. They also will have
to meet more often with other adults involved in the
child’s daily life—school staff, pediatricians, and men-
tal health professionals. Then there is all the interven-
tion with neighbors, Scout leaders, coaches, and others
in the community necessitated by the greater behavior
problems the child is likely to have when dealing with
these outsiders.

In other words, this job isn’t for wimps. But parent training
can help, and there’s no shame in seeking it.
Behavior therapists work directly with the parents, either
individually or in a group. They provide education about
ADHD, offer exercises in behavior management, model strate-
gies, and teach parents how to maintain records to monitor
progress. The record-keeping is important, because one of
the key principles of behavior therapy is to strive for gradual
 What Kinds of Behavior Therapies Help the Most? 123

change—and it’s often hard to know whether things are really

changing if the improvement is incremental, and when an
occasional explosion can make it seem that all is lost despite
overall progress. As noted above, people with ADHD need to
choose their rewards and also require a variety of rewards, so
it’s important to stay ahead of the curve. Also, many busy fam-
ilies have trouble keeping up with such charts, even though
they’re often essential to make sure that the regular rewards
so often needed for kids with ADHD are actually delivered in
timely fashion.
One of the main goals for all such parent management pro-
grams is to change the tone of the family interactions from
hostile and cajoling to positive and encouraging. It’s essential
to begin with small steps—otherwise, parents and kids alike
feel like failures. Any negative consequences to be adminis-
tered should be done without yelling or sarcasm.
One highly specialized form of parent training is
parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT). This empirically
based strategy, a mix of behavior therapy, play techniques, and
discipline training, features intensive coaching for parents of
young children, aged 2–7, with disruptive behavior. Developed
in 1974 by the clinical psychologist Sheila Eyberg, PCIT’s sig-
nature technique is real-time coaching. Parents interact with
their children while listening to advice from therapists who
watch them from behind a one-way mirror. The goal of PCIT is
to get parents to become more skillful in their interactions with
children. Specifically, the goal is to be “authoritative”: warm
and supportive while at the same time able to set clear limits.
Advocates of PCIT point to research demonstrating its effec-
tiveness for families of children with behavioral problems. Yet
Melanie A. Fernandez, PhD, a New York City clinical psychol-
ogist and spokeswoman for the program, cautions that PCIT
alone can’t substitute for medication. Many children in the
program take medication during it and after it ends. Nor does
PCIT appear to lessen fundamental ADHD symptoms. Rather,
it reduces some of the accompanying issues, such as irritation,
124 ADHD

anxiety, and depression, that in fact can do the most damage

to relationships.
The main goal of all parent training—and of broader family
therapy, which we describe in more detail in Chapter 9—is to
bring calm and sanity to homes that may have become caul-
drons of negativity, coercion, resistance, and punitive disci-
pline, as is all too typical in families with children with ADHD.
Parents learn to set clear expectations, to drop their tendencies
to yell, to set firm limits and reward or punish behaviors con-
sistently (e.g., through a time-out chair), and to follow through
on commands and expectations. Group-based behavior man-
agement programs for parents have the advantage that fami-
lies can learn from others undergoing similar struggles. The
therapist can also add individual sessions as needed to tailor
approaches to particular family situations.
Ideally, parents learn how to better understand at least some
of the reasons for their child’s vexing behaviors and to man-
age their own reactivity. Insights may include realizing that
the child with poor working memory simply can’t understand
a multipart command (like “go to your room, get your gray
shirt and comb, and bring them to me”). Parents also learn
how to help their children acquire skills, providing rewards
for each step of progress. They may also eventually learn how
best to manage punitive consequences, such as time-outs and
losses of rewards. In general, however, they are coached to use
positive encouragement rather than punishment whenever
possible.
Parent training can be a special challenge for families of
children with ADHD because of the likelihood that a large per-
centage the parents will have ADHD symptoms themselves,
putting them at a major disadvantage in staying organized
and controlling their reactions. The best therapists in this field
will spend some time helping parents understand their own
psychological profile, including ADHD, anxiety, and depres-
sion, and also help parents communicate with each other (in
 What Kinds of Behavior Therapies Help the Most? 125

two-parent families), given the high odds of marital conflict

in families with ADHD. In fact, treatment for the parents’ own
psychological issues is often a prerequisite for successful par-
ent training.
To increase the potential for success, parent training should
be combined with behavior therapy for children in their
classrooms, as we describe next. The biggest gains become
possible when parents and teachers are aligned about their
goals for the child—and provide consistent reinforcement in
home and school settings. A danger here is that parents and
other caregivers often disagree on the best approach, poten-
tially sabotaging strategies. As a result, it may sometimes be
a good idea to include a marital or couples’ therapist in the
treatment plan.

How is Behavior Therapy Used at School?

The goal here is for the therapist and parent to persuade the
child’s teacher to join the new behavior-management team,
extending the system of rewards to the classroom so that the
child gets consistent and mostly positive feedback all day long.
It’s also crucial for parents and teachers to agree on their goals
and expectations.
This type of teamwork may not be an easy sell. Today’s teach-
ers are besieged by overcrowded classrooms, low pay, and
increasing expectations to produce ever-rising test scores in all
of their students. On the other hand, many are also struggling
to cope with the disruptions caused by students with ADHD
and may be eager to learn better management tools.
An often-effective means of coordinating home and school
behavior therapy is a “daily report card” (DRC), on an index
card or online. To keep it simple (so as not to ask too much
of the typically overburdened teacher), the parents and thera-
pist, working with the teacher, should pick no more than four
goals for improvement, such as two academic goals and two
126 ADHD

behavioral goals, tailored to the child’s past performance. For

instance, the child’s goals for a given week might be to stay in a
reading circle for 10 minutes, as opposed to 5 the week before,
and to make it through lunch recess without a reprimand
from the yard monitor. The teacher simply checks yes or no for
each category, depending on whether the child met that day’s
objectives. Then, when the card goes home, parents tally the
responses to add to their reward charts. In an advanced form
of this program—with a teacher who’s really sold on it—the
parents can complete the reverse side of the card with respect
to the child’s behavior and homework performance during the
evening, and the teacher adds the points to the child’s reward
chart at school.
The goals should be incremental, positive, and as specific
as possible. For example, if Jose has been able to work on math
problems for only 3 minutes, on average, before wandering
away from his desk, the initial objective should be to get him
to keep at it for 5 or 6 minutes, rather than the whole math les-
son. The technical term for this kind of behavioral shaping is
“successive approximations”—and it’s one of the most impor-
tant points to impart to both parents and teachers. After initial
successes, the behavioral goals can be made gradually more
challenging. But if the child never succeeds in the first place,
the program can’t be effective.
Beyond the daily reports, there are many ways teachers
can give youth with ADHD a better chance of success in
the classroom. They can seat the child in the front row in
order to limit distractions, give different kinds of prompts
and reminders to make sure he or she is following the les-
son (sometimes a gentle tap on the shoulder is more than
enough), and provide a restless student opportunities to get
out of his or her chair, for instance, to pass out papers for the
teacher. All of these are possible within regular classroom
settings, although in classrooms with more than one or two
children with ADHD, a teacher’s aide can be a godsend.
 What Kinds of Behavior Therapies Help the Most? 127

For some youth with ADHD, special classrooms or highly

structured programs may be needed, a topic we take up in
Chapter 9.
Linda Pfiffner’s All About ADHD: The Complete Practical
Guide for Classroom Teachers (see Resources) provides valuable
suggestions and strategies for teachers managing classrooms
including youth with ADHD.

How Effective are Social Skills Groups for Children and

Adolescents with ADHD?
Many schools and after-school programs offer special train-
ing for quirky or rebellious kids, with the intention of helping
them behave better in class and get along better socially. Many
of these classes are taught in a group format, under the reason-
ing that children and teens are more likely to learn from one
another rather than from a lecturing adult.
The problem with this approach, however, is that unless
the group leaders are unusually skilled, the classes can
degenerate into gripe sessions or, worse, opportunities for the
worst-behaving students to tutor the rest in their techniques,
bringing the group’s behavior down to its lowest level. This
kind of “deviancy training,” as it’s sometimes called, can lead
to serious consequences: The negative modeling by peers
(especially if it involves aggression or demeaning comments
about the adult leaders or peers) may eliminate any hope of
progress delivered by the best-intentioned leaders.
Parents concerned about the quality of their children’s
relationships at school, by which we mean most if not all par-
ents, should treat these groups with caution. Don’t hesitate
to check the credentials of the group leaders, and make sure
they’re committed to a structured, reward-based approach,
which offers the best chances of success for youth with ADHD.
Parents should also be proactive in arranging after-school and
weekend play dates for their children with ADHD, who may
128 ADHD

not initially receive many such invitations. As we’ve noted,

even one supportive friendship can make an enormous differ-
ence for such youth.

What Kinds of Programs Can Help Kids with ADHD Get

More Organized?
Alas, few public schools offer organizational training for
youth with ADHD, even as there is persuasive evidence that
they should. A recent large clinical trial based on an organiza-
tional skills program developed by the psychologist Howard
Abikoff and his team at New York University Medical Center
found major benefits for the treated group of third through
fifth graders with ADHD.
Abikoff’s program is no-nonsense, involving twenty ses-
sions (two per week) delivered individually to the children.
Parents sit in for the last 10 minutes of each session, so they
can know what skills to reward at home. Units are provided
on everything from organizing a desk and backpack to time
management (including personal calendars). The treatment
also focuses heavily on homework organization, including
the recording of homework assignments, packing papers
and books needed for homework, estimating time to com-
plete homework, prioritizing homework assignments, and
reviewing that their work is done neatly and completely. The
researchers compared its benefits with those of a more tra-
ditional, parent- and teacher-based behavior therapy model,
in which adults were taught to reinforce the children’s better
organization, time management, and planning, and with a
nontreated control group. Both the organizational skills pro-
gram and the behavior therapy program were far superior to
no treatment. Parents rated the children’s gains as greater after
the organizational skills class than after behavior therapy.
The hope is that such enhanced organization will pay off
not only right away but also when the challenges of middle
 What Kinds of Behavior Therapies Help the Most? 129

school and high school place a premium on time management

and executive functions.

What is Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, and can it be

Effective for ADHD?
Cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) is most often a one-on-
one approach in which a therapist helps a patient recognize
the connections between his or her emotions, thoughts,
and behaviors, and, over time, change the harmful pat-
terns. Unlike traditional psychotherapy, it’s focused on the
here-and-now, avoiding emphasis on problematic parents,
unconscious conflicts, and other ways in which the patient
got to be that way in the first place. Researchers have found
it to be helpful for late adolescents and adults with ADHD,
although not so much for children with this condition, who
are usually not sufficiently mature to consciously monitor
their emotions and thoughts and translate cognitive change
into behavioral improvements.
Cognitive-behavior therapy focuses on getting a person to
challenge his or her “scripts,” that is, the ways he or she has
come to view his or her life and behavior. Normally the ther-
apist won’t directly contradict such beliefs by trying to talk
the person out of them. Instead, he or she will indirectly help
that person see the association between harmful thoughts and
behaviors and their usually unpleasant consequences. Ideally,
the patient eventually will try out different ways of think-
ing about and reacting to events, with, again ideally, better
results. Patients are taught to monitor their thinking patterns
and emotional responses, along with the resultant successes
or failures, in order to see for themselves which strategies
work best. It’s an active approach to treatment: Clients com-
plete homework between sessions to try out these alternative
means of construing the world and their own cognitive and
emotional responses.
130 ADHD

As an example, a client who comes to see the therapist after

blowing a job interview may fret that he or she is a loser and
will always fail, so what’s the use? The therapist would use
that opportunity to encourage the client to consider other
explanations (perhaps the job simply wasn’t a good fit?), to
figure out specifically what went wrong (a lack of relevant
skills?), and to come up with a plan to make alternative plans
for future situations like this. At the same time, the therapist
would help the client recognize the association between rumi-
native (or obsessive) thinking about the failure and how such
negative thoughts might lead him or her to give up rather than
try again.
Cognitive-behavior therapy for ADHD will also usually
involve a structured set of skill-building tasks, aiming, for
example, to improve time-management and planning skills,
and requiring the client to practice such new techniques out-
side of the therapist’s office.
Research has shown that the goal-oriented nature of CBT
makes it one of the most efficient forms of therapy for adults
with ADHD. Traditional “talk therapy” has not been proven
helpful, as a rule, when it comes to ADHD. In contrast, the
active, skill-based approaches of CBT can yield results in a rel-
atively short time, without endless years on the couch. It can
also be useful with some of the more common comorbidities of
ADHD, such as anxiety and depression.

Which is Best, After All: Medication or Behavior Therapy?

The answer, perhaps not surprisingly, is both. A useful adage
is that pills don’t teach skills. Although medication for ADHD
can reduce symptoms relatively quickly, people who have the
disorder—and especially those who are further impaired by
accompanying conditions such as anxiety, depression, conduct
problems, or learning disorders—often need something more.
The first clear finding on this topic came from the ground-
breaking Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD
 What Kinds of Behavior Therapies Help the Most? 131

(MTA), which we mentioned in Chapter 7. Its initial report in

1999 concluded that carefully monitored and delivered medi-
cation was the single best treatment strategy for ADHD, with
behavior therapy offering comparatively few additional ben-
efits. It is important to keep in mind, however, that this first
report focused mainly on symptom reduction. There was lit-
tle consideration of family management, social relationships,
and success at school, suggesting that the benefits of behavior
therapy were probably understated. In fact, a follow-up MTA
report, published several years after the initial papers, sup-
ports the contention that combining medication and behav-
ior therapy is the best course when considering this broader
picture of well-being. Researchers found that only the com-
bination of well-delivered medication plus intensive behavior
therapy provided essential benefits for children when it came
to relief from comorbid disorders, school achievement, social
skills as rated by the teacher, and the family’s shift toward a
more authoritative parenting style. In other words, most chil-
dren with ADHD can greatly benefit from behavior therapy,
in addition to (or in some cases instead of) medication. In fact,
many therapists believe that one of the best uses of the medica-
tion is to help patients focus on the behavior therapy, to offer
the greatest chance of long-lasting benefits. The hope is for
synergy, with the medication enhancing short-term concentra-
tion and impulse control and the behavior therapy working to
improve long-lasting social and academic skills.

Focusing On: Behavior Therapy

We know we’re setting a high bar with our strong recommen-
dation of behavior therapy for ADHD. Obviously such therapy
takes a lot more time, energy, and money than does treatment
with medications, nor is it easy to find a truly skilled thera-
pist, not to mention someone on your insurance plan. The bot-
tom line, however, is that behavior therapy is usually a must
for children and adolescents coping with ADHD. When done
132 ADHD

right, it can have lasting benefits. Medication can help dampen

symptoms, but particularly when ADHD is accompanied by
other disorders, such as anxiety, depression, conduct prob-
lems, or learning disorders (as is typically the case), the addi-
tion of behavior therapy yields a better chance of providing
wider and more lasting gains. One of the most effective but
also most difficult behavior therapies is parent management
training. The goal of this therapy is that families at their wits’
end can learn to be both calmer and more skilled at setting lim-
its, two things youth with ADHD urgently need. Ideally, par-
ents and therapists should recruit teachers to help extend the
behavior training to the child’s classroom. Cognitive-behavior
therapy (CBT), which focuses on building skills and chang-
ing self-destructive thought patterns, has been shown to be
effective in helping late adolescents and adults with ADHD,
but doesn’t work well with children, who are cannot skillfully
monitor themselves without more direct rewards. We con-
tinue this general discussion of nonmedication approaches in
the following chapter.
 9
WHAT OTHER STRATEGIES
MAY BE HELPFUL IN
TREATING ADHD?

What Do We Know About the Value of Daily Exercise?

The evidence is solid and plentiful on this question: Regular,
intense physical exercise is good for everyone’s brain and par-
ticularly helpful for the brains of people with ADHD. Scientists
have known the basic truth about the general benefits of exer-
cise for some years and have found substantial recent evidence
to confirm it with regard to ADHD.
In late 2014, the medical journal Pediatrics published a study
on the cognitive value of exercise, showing that kids who partic-
ipated in a regular physical activity program showed important
improvements in executive functions—including the ability to
maintain focus and resist distraction, plus working memory
and cognitive flexibility. This study came on the heels of a simi-
lar finding in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, reporting
that a 12-week exercise program improved math and reading
test scores in all children, but especially in those with signs of
ADHD. Similarly, the Journal of Attention Disorders reported that
merely 26 minutes of daily physical activity for two months sig-
nificantly reduced ADHD symptoms in grade-school students.
Outdoor play appears to be particularly helpful. Peer-
reviewed research has shown that the children who enjoyed
134 ADHD

regular outdoor playtime in a green environment had milder

ADHD symptoms than other children with ADHD who were
stuck indoors. All this dovetails with animal research, which
has provided evidence that a lack of play and physical activity
can lead to hyperactive symptoms.
The ADHD expert and Harvard psychiatrist John Ratey has
written an entire book on the brain-boosting power of exer-
cise, titled Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and
the Brain. He presents considerable research to support his con-
tention that exercise produces, boosts, and regulates substances
that relieve pain (endorphins), lift moods and motivation (via
dopamine and serotonin), and improve self-control (via norepi-
nephrine). It also helps counteract stress by dampening cortisol,
the stress hormone, and improves cellular connections between
the cortex and hippocampus that are crucial for learning and
memory.
We wonder: Why do scientists have to keep pressing home
this point? More importantly, why haven’t all American
schools understood that it’s in their own and their students’
interests to provide regular exercise as part of the school
day? Although some schools recognize the value of physi-
cal education, the trend is unfortunately going in the oppo-
site direction: In many public schools, as students cram for
standardized tests, they’re barely getting 15 minutes to eat
their lunch, never mind take a yoga class or even jog around
a field.
We’re not saying that aerobic exercise is a cure for ADHD.
Still, it should clearly be part of a balanced, overall treatment
plan. An added incentive is found in research revealing that
increasing numbers of children with ADHD risk becoming
obese adults. The lack of attention to diet, as well as impulse
control issues, lead to those higher rates of obesity in chil-
dren with ADHD than in peers without the disorder. Regular
exercise—or even any regular physical activity—beginning in
childhood could be a preventive strategy.
 What Other Strategies May Be Helpful in Treating ADHD? 135

How Does Diet Affect ADHD?

For decades, many families opposed to medication for ADHD
have put their faith in rigorous dietary changes, hoping that
these strategies might substitute for pills. The short answer is
that considerable research to date shows they can’t. No inter-
vention so far matches the strength of ADHD medication or
the important benefits of behavior therapies. But that doesn’t
mean that some nutritional approaches aren’t worth trying.
Every bit of effort may help, and after many years in which the
medical community scoffed at dietary interventions, there’s
intriguing recent evidence that some may indeed be influen-
tial, at least with some people and to some degree.
Beginning in the 1970s, the best-known dietary program for
ADHD has been the Feingold diet, developed by the pediatri-
cian Benjamin Feingold, who argued that common food addi-
tives including artificial dyes and preservatives worsened or
even caused ADHD symptoms. His diet eliminates many food
additives and processed foods as well as some fruits and veg-
etables, including apples, oranges, and pineapple, that contain
a kind of chemical called a salicylate.
Feingold claimed that 70 percent of children with hyperac-
tivity benefited from this diet. His claim was made less con-
vincing, however, by the fact that he never compared these
children with a control group of youth who were not on the
diet, as gold-standard research would require. Moreover, it’s
important to consider just what it takes for a family to enforce
such a diet, monitoring every meal and snack, in and outside
the home. In fact, it’s hard to tell whether the Feingold diet’s
touted benefits pertain to the diet itself or rather to the de facto
behavior management that families enforcing it must exert,
with children gaining indirectly from all that extra attention
and structure. Experimental studies in the 1980s, in which
researchers rigorously switched regular and additive-free
diets in homes, controlling for changes in family structure and
expectations, revealed that only a small fraction of children
136 ADHD

with ADHD (on the order of 5 percent) showed any apprecia-

ble response.
In 2007, however, Feingold’s focus on food additives
received its first major mainstream evidence-based confir-
mation. Based on carefully designed research funded by
the British government, the medical journal The Lancet pub-
lished findings offering “strong support” that additives com-
monly found in children’s diets, including artificial colors
and sodium benzoate, appeared to increase hyperactivity.
The study persuaded the United Kingdom’s Food Standards
Agency to call for the removal of six artificial coloring agents
from food sold to children. Previously, a meta-analysis of 15
trials by university researchers at Harvard and Columbia had
suggested that removing additives from the diets of children
with ADHD could be as much as half as effective as treating
them with methylphenidate. In 2008, the American Academy
of Pediatrics published its own support of the British conclu-
sions, conceding, in its publication AAP Grand Rounds, that,
“The overall findings of the study are clear and require that
even we skeptics, who have long doubted parental claims of
the effects of various foods on the behavior of their children,
admit we might have been wrong.”
Although all of this might motivate any parent to work
harder to provide his or her children with an additive-free
diet, there are still some big caveats to consider. One is that
only a subset of children appear to be sensitive to the suspect
chemicals, and it’s hard to know which ones they might be.
The other major problem, mentioned above, is all the work
and discipline required. Backers of the Feingold program and
similar approaches usually recommend an “elimination diet,”
in which a child begins by eating only items in a small group
of safe foods, gradually adding more foods to the menu until
the symptoms return. This rigorous plan would be difficult for
most parents and children to carry out—but may frankly be
impossible for many families coping with ADHD. What fami-
lies can certainly try, however, is to eliminate the most obvious
 What Other Strategies May Be Helpful in Treating ADHD? 137

culprits, such as candies, many brightly colored cereals, fruit

drinks, and sodas, to see if that helps.
This brings us to another common concern of parents of
children with ADHD, which is the worry that sugar in any
form may worsen their behavior. The available evidence sug-
gests this simply isn’t true. Granted, sugar should be limited in
most diets, to protect teeth and maintain a healthy weight. But
researchers have found that when it comes to ADHD, sugar
has no appreciable effect on symptoms. In one classic study
of 35 mothers and their sons, aged 5 to 7, researchers gave all
of the boys a dose of aspartame, an artificial sweetener, but
told half of the mothers that their sons had eaten sugar. The
mothers who thought their children had been given sugar
told investigators that they thought their boys became more
hyperactive.
Once again, whether or not your goal is to reduce ADHD
symptoms, you can’t go wrong by giving your child—and
yourself—the healthiest possible diet. A couple of eggs or other
high-protein dish in the morning beats a chocolate doughnut
any day for providing healthy, lasting energy. High-sugar
foods indeed cause an insulin response that drives the body’s
natural sugar levels down within a couple hours, leaving you
feeling irritable and stressed.

Which Supplements, if Any, Are Worth a Try?

Our basic rule on supplements is: Proceed with caution. Lots
of caution. This thriving, multibillion-dollar industry—a
large part of what we call the ADHD Industrial Complex,
described in Chapter 10—remains almost entirely unregu-
lated. Supplements are also usually costly and occasionally
unsafe. That said, some do merit consideration.
The leader of this pack is omega-3 fatty acids, which you
can get by eating more fish, flaxseeds, olive oil, and some nuts,
or from capsules of fish oil. A critical mass of credible research
indicates that omega-3s can help with attention and moods,
138 ADHD

although the degree to which they can help is still murky. In

a 2009 Swedish study, 25 percent of children with ADHD who
took daily supplements of omega-3s had a significant decrease
in symptoms after 3 months; by 6 months almost half of the
children had improved. Yet a larger, overarching review of
relevant investigations in 2011 found only a small yet statisti-
cally significant benefit for ADHD symptoms. In other words,
there were improvements that were better than could be had
with a placebo, but still much smaller than those provided by
prescription ADHD medications. This is why we recommend
that such supplements should be used, if at all, as an adjunct
to but never a replacement for tried-and-true strategies such as
medication and behavior therapy.
Still, there is a case for increasing your consumption of
these important fatty acids. Most modern diets are deficient in
omega-3s, supplying only about 5 percent of what our ances-
tors consumed. Some evidence suggests that children with
ADHD may have even lower levels than the general popula-
tion, which is unfortunate news, considering the strong con-
sensus that these essential fats not only help prevent heart
disease but also support brain health, making neurotransmis-
sion more efficient. (They’re called “essential” because our
bodies don’t make them, so we have to consume them.) Some
studies suggest that a serious omega-3 deficiency may cause or
exacerbate ADHD symptoms by interfering with neurotrans-
mitters, including serotonin and dopamine.
Does that mean that people with ADHD should simply eat
a lot more fish? Alas, because our oceans are now so polluted,
many species of fish now contain such high mercury levels
that they would be toxic if eaten in large quantities. With this
caution in mind, a subcommittee of the American Psychiatric
Association has suggested that children diagnosed with
ADHD eat up to 12 ounces a week of fish and shellfish that
are low in mercury, such as shrimp, canned light tuna, and
salmon.
 What Other Strategies May Be Helpful in Treating ADHD? 139

If you do choose the supplements, make sure they’re puri-

fied, and look for a brand with relatively high EPA, or eicosa-
pentaenoic acid, compared with DHA, or docosahexaenoic
acid. Try to avoid the gummies and chewable form, which
tend to have lower doses of these essential ingredients. For
younger children, the best strategy may be to buy the liquid
form and put it in juice or smoothies.
Fish oil capsules in general are relatively safe and free of
side effects, but keep in mind that when taken in high doses,
they can thin the blood, preventing clotting. Always consult
with your doctor before adding a supplement, especially if you
are taking other medications or supplements that might inter-
act with them in harmful ways. This includes aspirin, which is
also a blood-thinner. The most common side effects of fish oil,
which increase with higher doses, are belching, bad breath,
heartburn, nausea, loose stools, rashes, and nosebleeds.
Another popular but in this case more controversial sup-
plement is gingko biloba, encouraged by prominent experts
who recommend it specifically for problems with attention.
Animal studies show that gingko biloba can indeed increase
the brain’s dopamine activity. Yet studies have shown that it
also can interfere with blood clotting. Ginseng, another pop-
ular purported brain-booster, has been linked to high blood
pressure and rapid heartbeat. The bottom line is that to date,
no conclusive evidence exists that either of these substances
truly reduces ADHD symptoms.
Yetanotherkindofsupplementthathasreceivedalotofattention
on ADHD blogs—yet without adequate empirical support—is
the amino acid tyrosine, a chemical precursor to dopamine
and norepinephrine. Limited research suggests that tyrosine
supplements may help control ADHD symptoms, at least in the
short term. Somewhat similar is the case of N-acetyl cysteine,
or NAC, another touted supplement that comes from the amino
acid L-cysteine. Recent research has found it to be potentially
useful in treating psychiatric disorders such as addiction and
140 ADHD

obsessive compulsive disorder, but we have yet to see evidence

of its effectiveness in treating ADHD.
Finally, let’s look at vitamins and minerals. Here, the evi-
dence is strongest (although not conclusive) for iron, with
somewhat less support for zinc and magnesium.
It’s indeed worthwhile to make sure that your child, or you,
has adequate levels of iron, either from diet, or if needed, a
supplement. Intriguingly, a 2004 study showed the average
iron level of children with ADHD to be half that of children
without the disorder. Because too much iron is dangerous,
don’t give supplements without first getting a blood test.
Dr. Sanford Newmark, author of ADHD Without Drugs, A Guide
to the Natural Care of Children With ADHD, recommends having
a doctor check your child’s ferritin levels, which measure the
amount of iron stored in the body, cautioning that a normal
blood count for iron doesn’t mean the ferritin levels are nor-
mal. If the levels are low, say below 35, you can talk with the
doctor about adding a supplement or, better yet, increasing
consumption of iron-rich foods, such as lean red meat, turkey,
chicken, shellfish, and beans.
There is also some evidence that zinc and magnesium may
help reduce ADHD symptoms. As with iron, both are essen-
tial but often lacking in children's diets. Zinc in particular has
been found, in limited research, to play a role in improving the
brain’s response to dopamine and may even help improve the
effectiveness of prescription stimulants.

What is Neurofeedback, and How Helpful is it for

People with ADHD?
Neurofeedback, sometimes referred to as “EEG feedback,” is
biofeedback for the brain. The operating theory is that it trains
your brain to improve itself through repetitive trials in which
you learn to maintain a calm focus. Neurofeedback practitio-
ners claim it can be effective for a vast range of problems, from
migraines to anxiety to autism, epilepsy, and ADHD. A major
 What Other Strategies May Be Helpful in Treating ADHD? 141

attraction of the technique is the chance that it might help

patients from needing medication. Instead, patients practice
routines that seem more like exercising a muscle.
The treatment has been growing in popularity even as
evidence for such claims has been intriguing but to date not
conclusive. What this means, to be blunt, is that trying neuro-
feedback for yourself or your child amounts to a costly gamble
of time and money, with the risk of avoiding other treatments
that might be more useful. Practitioners normally require at
least 40 sessions, with each session costing more than $100,
and most insurance plans won’t cover it. Another risk is that
the field remains woefully unregulated, meaning you may
have to do considerable research to find a conscientious and
effective therapist. Alas, many scam artists have jumped into
this field.
A typical session looks like this: You sit in a chair while the
practitioner attaches electrodes to your scalp with a viscous
goop. The electrodes are connected to wires that carry sig-
nals from the electrical firing of cells in your brain to a com-
puter. The signals are recorded via an electroencephalogram,
or EEG, forming patterns of waves, with different frequen-
cies, the speed of which is measured in cycles per second, or
hertz (Hz).
The idea is that your mental states correlate with whatever
frequency is dominant, or registering the highest voltage.
Slower waves, such as the so-called theta speeds of 4–to 8 Hz,
can indicate either drowsiness or an imagination at work. The
faster beta waves, from 12 Hz to as high as 35 Hz, correlate
with mental states ranging from alert and relaxed to nervous
and cranky.
We all need a variety of frequencies to suit different circum-
stances. But many people have a mismatch of resources to task.
The neurofeedback is intended to encourage the right sorts of
brain waves while discouraging the less desirable ones. For
people with ADHD, a neurofeedback practitioner will usually
try to encourage states of calm concentration.
142 ADHD

During the neurofeedback session, the patient focuses on

a computer screen, which shows images designed to encour-
age the desired state. One popular program displays images of
stars that explode, with enticing music, when you manage to
maintain brain waves evidencing a state of calm concentration.
Neurofeedback was developed in the 1960s and ’70s, with
American researchers leading the way. In 1968, M. Barry
Sterman, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los
Angeles, reported that the training helped cats resist epileptic
seizures. Sterman and others later claimed to have achieved
similar benefits with humans.
The findings prompted a flurry of interest in which clini-
cians of varying degrees of respectability jumped into the
field, some unfortunately making unsupported claims about
seeming miracle cures and tainting the treatment’s reputation
among academic experts. Researchers in Germany and the
Netherlands have produced some of the most impressive stud-
ies. In 2009, a group of Dutch scientists published an analysis
of recent international studies and concluded that neurofeed-
back for ADHD was “clinically meaningful.”
Although such studies strongly suggest that neurofeedback
has clinical benefits, at this writing truly definitive studies have
not yet been done. In such research, a control group would be
hooked up to the same electrodes and see the same images
on the computer monitors, but the feedback on the monitor
would be false—not linked to the brain waves the clients were
displaying at the time. Such a control condition is particu-
larly necessary for a technique like neurofeedback, in which
the electrodes and computers often create a strong expec-
tancy that change will occur. In 2014, the National Institute
of Mental Health funded a study using just this methodology.
Results may not be known until at least 2018. Yet a pilot study
also sponsored by the NIMH has suggested that there may be
no breakthrough results: Investigators in that case found that
both the real and the sham neurofeedback were better than no
treatment but no different from each other.
 What Other Strategies May Be Helpful in Treating ADHD? 143

Whether or not neurofeedback provides benefits, ques-

tions remain about how long those benefits might persist and
whether they would extend beyond a researcher’s lab to other
contexts, such as a classroom, sports field, or birthday party.
Similar questions apply not just to neurofeedback, of course,
but to mainstream strategies of medication and behavior ther-
apy. There’s simply no silver bullet for ADHD—at least not yet.

Beyond Parent Management Therapy, What Other Help is

Available for Families Coping with ADHD?
In contrast to parent training, with its clear goals of help-
ing mothers and fathers calmly shape behavior with struc-
tured discipline and rewards and establish clear limits for
limit-testing kids, other forms of family therapy deal less with
rules and routines and more with improving communication
between parents and offspring. A typical premise is that the
family is experiencing difficulties not only because of one
flawed member but due to the troubled dynamics within the
entire family system.
Family conflict is usually a given when one or more mem-
bers has ADHD. By the time the crew arrives in the therapist’s
office, mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers are often coping
with considerable anger and blame. The “neurotypical” mem-
bers may, often justifiably, resent all the attention the member
or members diagnosed with ADHD have been getting. They
may also be upset at how sloppy and disorganized the child
with ADHD may be, which among other things tends to bur-
den others with more chores. At the same time, the person or
persons diagnosed with ADHD may feel like the conspicu-
ous target of sometimes unfair blame, a status professional
therapists refer to as being the “IP”: Identified Patient. A skill-
ful family therapist can help people voice their concerns and
resentments and develop a plan to survive the cabin-fever
years, before children start to have activities that take them
out of the house.
144 ADHD

We believe that family therapy can be useful in helping to

improve sibling and parent relationships and make home life
less nightmarish. Yet given the choice between family therapy
and behavior therapy (i.e., the form of family therapy in which
parents learn better ways to dole our rewards and set limits),
we’d try the behavior therapy first, especially when the child
with ADHD is still young. The reason is that whether or not
the person with ADHD feels like an IP, they are usually a major
source, if not the major source, of trouble within the home. As
soon as their symptoms improve, you can expect more peace
in the family.
Without early interventions, and sometimes even with
them, family problems tend to worsen significantly once chil-
dren with ADHD become adolescents. Any behavior therapy
with families in which there’s a teen with ADHD must eschew
the refrigerator charts that may have worked wonders at ages
7 and 8 and instead focus on skilled negotiations between par-
ents and the adolescent. One strategy worth considering is to
draft contracts in which each side acknowledges its particular
desires and needs, emphasizing that give-and-take is part of a
healthy family life.
One reputedly effective program for families with disrup-
tive teenagers is the Boulder, Colorado-based Vive. It works
on two fronts simultaneously, providing parents with a coach
while assigning a mentor to the child who is struggling with
ADHD or other emotional problems. The mentor, who (like
the coach) is a trained therapist, acts as the child’s advocate,
coach, and sounding board. Vive is aimed at families in seri-
ous crisis who can devote substantial time in addition to pay-
ing fees of up to $3,000 a month. Most of the appointments
take place away from the therapists’ office; the parent coach
will often visit the family’s home to make it easier on work-
ing parents, while the youth’s mentor may meet him or her
at school or at a coffeehouse. A unique aspect of Vive is that
the mentor’s work extends to helping the youth with school
or job-related problems. Similarly, the parent coach will try to
 What Other Strategies May Be Helpful in Treating ADHD? 145

help reduce indirect stresses, such as marital bickering and

unemployment.
Unlike parent-child interaction therapy, described in
Chapter 8, Vive has no independent research to support it.
Instead, its leaders point to published research on the potential
value of mentors. There is indeed evidence that under the right
circumstances—including a highly structured program with
expectations of frequent meetings, and good-quality train-
ing and supervision of the mentors—this kind of relationship
can make a big difference for kids, improving psychologi-
cal well-being, reducing high-risk behavior, and raising the
chances for academic and job success.
Our final example of a family-focused therapy is the
Nurtured Heart Approach, a set of strategies developed by
the Tucson, Arizona, therapist Howard Glasser, at Tucson’s
Center for the Difficult Child, beginning in 1994. The gist of
the approach is for caregivers to learn to reward a child’s good
behavior while not unwittingly rewarding bad behavior by
overreacting to it. The idea is that difficult kids get stimulated
by intense attention and learn to provoke it by misbehaving.
Glasser’s approach has been used in hundreds of schools
throughout the country in the past two decades, including
many Head Start programs and several elementary, junior,
and high schools in Michigan. The program’s website claims
it has a “proven, transformative impact on every child, includ-
ing those with behavioral diagnosis such as ADHD, Autism,
Asperger’s Syndrome, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and
Reactive Attachment Disorder—almost always without the
need for medications or long-term treatment.” Nonetheless, at
this writing, no controlled evaluations exist of this extremely
positive approach to dealing with troubled youth.

What Kind of Academic Support is Available from Schools?

School is often where clinically distracted children suffer the
most, but the good news is that there are laws in place that
146 ADHD

intend to help them. A broad range of school-based accom-

modations and treatments can benefit kids with ADHD. The
big problems are that too many parents still aren’t aware of
them; school officials can be resistant to spending the money
(understandably in some cases, given the stretched nature of
public school budgets), and some of the most evidence-based
and cost-effective interventions aren’t used as they should be.
As a parent of a child with a suspected or confirmed learn-
ing disability, including ADHD, you have a legal right to
request, and if justified, receive, special support from your
child’s public school. Section 504 of the US Rehabilitation Act
of 1973 is the applicable law in most cases. This piece of civil
rights legislation prohibits discrimination based on “mental
or physical impairment that substantially limits one or more
major life activity,” including learning, concentrating, and
interacting with others. The law says your child must have
“equal access” to education—meaning that if he or she needs
more time on tests, note-taking help, tutoring, or even social
skills training to stay in school, the school must provide or
pay for it.
Public schools must comply with this law on pain of los-
ing their federal aid. On request, the school district is obliged
to provide a copy of its Section 504 policies, including an
explanation of how decisions may be appealed. The law also
allows parents to request an evaluation of their child, which
in turn may lead to assistance referred to as a “504 plan.”
Accommodations under such a plan may include tutoring,
counseling, extra time on tests, access to a computer, and
an extra set of textbooks to use at home. Active kids may be
allowed to sit on “fit balls” or hold squishy toys to control
their tendency to fidget. School officials may also encourage a
child’s teacher to devote extra attention to make sure he or she
is engaged in the classroom, to employ more frequent praise
and encouragement, and to offer special rewards for progress.
For more severe learning problems, another federal
law applies: the IDEA, or the Individuals with Disabilities
 What Other Strategies May Be Helpful in Treating ADHD? 147

Education Act. Under the IDEA, parents have the right to ask
that the school screen their child for a disability, potentially a
way to avoid paying high fees to a private specialist. If school
authorities don’t think the tests are needed, they can turn the
parents down, but the parents have a right to an appeal. The
school’s assessments are usually much more limited than those
offered by private professionals. Children who qualify under
this system are eligible for what’s known as an individualized
education program, or IEP: a system of accommodations and
regular meetings to monitor them. The 504 plan, in contrast,
has the advantage of being faster to implement, more flexible,
and potentially less stigmatizing.
It’s worth remembering that a daily report card can be writ-
ten in as an accommodation through a 504 plan or an IEP. This
is one of the few truly evidence-based accommodations that
parents can and should seek.
Unfortunately, many parents these days get into battles with
their schools and districts over assessments, diagnostic labels,
and the right kinds of accommodations and special education
placements for their child. Such conflicts are not only stressful
for both sides but drain precious resources from cash-strapped
schools that may ultimately be forced by lawsuits to provide
costly plans for individual children. We believe that basic
behavioral training for more teachers—as well as the use of
paraprofessional teachers’ aides, who can assist teachers with
prompting and rewarding not only youth with ADHD but the
whole classroom—could be used much more often than the
considerably costlier alternatives of resource rooms, special
classes, or even (at the extreme) transfers to special schools,
necessarily underwritten by public-school districts. All of
these have been outcomes of some of the legal settlements with
families of diagnosed children. Advocating for your child at
school may inspire you to summon your inner tiger mother, or
father, to avoid being intimidated by teachers and other staff.
The best course, however, is to be polite and respectful, and not
mention the word “lawyer” unless it’s absolutely inevitable.
148 ADHD

Focusing On: Additional Treatment Strategies

Many high-quality research studies have shown that a regular
routine of aerobic physical exercise can make a big difference
in the lives of children and adults with ADHD. For as little as
a half hour a day, a brisk walk, swim, bike ride, dance class, or
many other variations on this theme can improve focus and
mood. Exercise can be cheap and effective and good for your
body as well as your brain, no matter whether or not you have
a diagnosis. We recommend it without reservation as part of
your treatment plan, as long as you don’t consider it a sub-
stitute for evidence-based medication or behavior therapy
treatments.
The evidence is weaker when it comes to dietary treatments
for ADHD, many of which are nonetheless quite popular.
Credible research suggests it’s wise to limit or eliminate con-
sumption of food additives and dyes and make sure you or
your child is getting sufficient iron, zinc, and omega-3 fatty
acids in food or supplements. Beyond that, beware of touted
over-the-counter supplements for ADHD, some of which can
have dangerous side effects.
Neurofeedback, or biofeedback for the brain, is an increas-
ingly popular intervention for ADHD, with some intrigu-
ing research to support it. Nonetheless, it is expensive,
time-consuming, and not yet proven to be as effective as medi-
cation, behavior therapy, and even physical exercise. It’s not
yet clear that it will surpass rigorous control conditions; at this
writing, the first major US federally funded trial is underway.
Beyond parent training, family therapy may be a useful
part of your treatment plan, to cope with resentments that can
build up in homes with family members who have ADHD.
Accommodations at school should also be part of your overall
plan. Federal law makes this a civil right for your child, and
some school-based strategies can make a big difference.
 10
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO
KNOW ABOUT THE “ADHD
INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX”?

What Do We Mean by the “ADHD Industrial Complex”?

We use this term to refer to the vast and mostly unregulated
marketplace of touted but unproven treatments for ADHD.
A few of these may be useful for some people, but most risk
costing needless time, energy, and money. Even worse, they
may delay or prevent you from exploring evidence-based
intervention strategies that would be cheaper and, in all prob-
ability, more effective. Considering the long-term impairments
linked to ADHD that we’ve documented earlier in this book,
you don’t want to waste precious resources and time, missing
out on opportunities for yourself or your offspring to make
progress toward a better life.
The first rule to follow is: Buyer beware. Later in this chap-
ter we address some of the specifics of being a smart consumer.
For now, we’ll just say that you’ll unfortunately encounter a
great deal of hype within the industrial complex. People with
ADHD have long been especially easy targets for disreputable
salespeople. The same qualities of anxiety, impulsiveness, and
carelessness that can make people with this disorder so eager
to do something can also lead to serious mistakes. We some-
times think that Amazon’s “one-click” feature was designed
with people with ADHD in mind.
150 ADHD

What are Some Particularly Egregious Examples of

Schemes to Avoid?
Alas, we can think of quite a few of these. Beware in particular
of promises that look too good to be true, such as those found
in books with titles such as Dr. Bob’s Guide to Stop ADHD in 18
Days. (As you should know after reading this far, that’s simply
not possible.) Think again—and then again—before invest-
ing in any books or especially in any programs that aren’t
backed by sound, independent research, which means most
programs other than traditional behavior therapy for kids,
cognitive-behavior therapy for adults, and FDA-approved
medications.
A cautionary tale in this regard involves the once-heavily
advertised “Dore Program,” originally called dyslexia dys-
praxia attention treatment (DDAT). The patented technique,
touted as effective in ameliorating a range of learning and
behavioral problems including ADHD, was developed by the
multimillionaire British businessman Wynford Dore, whose
daughter had been diagnosed with dyslexia. It consisted of a
series of exercises, to be performed for about 10 minutes twice
a day, over the course of a year to 18 months. The exercises
included throwing and catching a beanbag and standing on
a “balance board,” a wooden disk that wobbles around on a
ball. The purported goal of all this activity was to stimulate
the cerebellum, a brain region involved in coordination, tim-
ing and possibly some aspects of learning. The first Dore cen-
ter was established in the United Kingdom in 2000. At its peak,
the program was available at dozens of centers in the United
Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, with a price tag of
$3,500 or more. In 2003, it was favorably featured in a segment
on CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes II.”
Shortly afterward, however, the Dore program came
under sharp criticism by scientists and advocacy groups. The
International Dyslexia Association declared that such inter-
ventions were “not supported by current knowledge,” and
Dorothy Bishop, a psychology professor at Oxford University,
 What Do You Need to Know About the “ADHD Industrial Complex”? 151

warned pediatricians that published studies on the program

were “seriously flawed,” and that “the claims made for this
expensive treatment are misleading.” The Dore organization
filed for bankruptcy in 2008, leaving many parents stranded
in the middle of their child’s program.
One year later, however, the rights to the program were
bought by Dynevor Limited, owned by Welsh rugby player
Scott Quinnell. A website for the program in 2014 said it
was available in Dallas, Texas, and Jackson and Hattiesburg,
Mississippi. To say the least, there is no sound evidence behind
it.
Diagnostic brain scans are another industrial complex
commodity to be avoided, at least for the foreseeable future.
In recent years, researchers have learned a great deal about
the ADHD brain by comparing hundreds of brain scans
of diagnosed children with equivalent numbers of scans
of those without the disorder. At this writing, however, the
overwhelming scientific consensus is that no one can can tell
whether a given person has ADHD simply by looking at an
image of his or her brain. That’s because there is such great
variability among different brains—each made up of over 100
billion neurons and many trillions of synapses—and in differ-
ent contexts. Indeed, some people with ADHD may not show
the expected brain-based differences, even as others who don’t
have the disorder may do so. The bottom line is that today’s
technology and level of understanding have not reached the
point where it is possible to diagnose any mental illness in a
given person with a single brain scan.
Regardless, some entrepreneurs, chief among them the
author and psychiatrist Daniel Amen, insist that a single scan
can be telling. Over the past 25 years, Dr. Amen has built up
a large practice based on his contention that he can not only
diagnose ADHD but customize treatment strategies based
on what he sees on images produced from a single-photon
emission computed tomography (SPECT) scan, which uses
nuclear imaging to create three-dimensional pictures. He has
152 ADHD

argued that there are seven subtypes of ADHD (including the

“Ring of Fire ADHD” and “Limbic ADHD”), with each requir-
ing a different sort of intervention (chiefly different kinds of
medications).
In past years, doctors have used SPECT scans to look at the
function of some internal organs, and, more recently, to help
evaluate dementia caused by Alzheimer’s disease. Yet there
is no valid evidence to support the diagnosis and treatment
of ADHD in this way. In fact, it would take samples of many
thousands of brains, in rigorously conducted, long-term clinical
trials, to even begin to validate specific treatment profiles for
as many as seven subtypes of ADHD, and no one has pub-
lished this research. Even so, many unsuspecting families
have flocked to obtain such brain scans, in order to help their
distracted and in some cases aggressive offspring.
Eminent neuroscientists including the University of
Pennsylvania’s Martha Farah have argued furiously against
these sorts of practices. In an opinion piece in the Journal of
Cognitive Neuroscience titled “A Picture Is Worth a Thousand
Dollars”—which actually underestimates the scans’
cost—Farah excoriated the practice of relying on such scans not
just for diagnostic purposes but for lie-detection and market-
ing research, writing, “whether from genuine misunderstand-
ing or cynical opportunism, some entrepreneurs are making
unrealistic claims about the current capabilities of brain imag-
ing. As cognitive neuroscientists, we have a responsibility to
stay informed about this work and to speak up when we see
our science being misrepresented.”
Perhaps someday far in the future, evidence-based inves-
tigators using sophisticated brain-imaging methods may be
able, on the basis of voluminous research, to diagnose mental
disorders from a scan. For now, we suggest you wait until such
a body of evidence exists. The SPECT scans not only aren’t
cheap—you may find yourself paying up to $3,000 for a pretty
image—but require injections of a radioactive isotope, which
are potentially dangerous for children.
 What Do You Need to Know About the “ADHD Industrial Complex”? 153

Can Marijuana Cure Distraction? And—Are We Pulling Your Leg

by Even Asking?
As the popularity of medical marijuana has grown in recent
years, for recommended uses including chronic pain and
nausea from chemotherapy, some doctors have also been pre-
scribing it to treat ADHD, including for adolescent patients.
Supporters of this practice, many of whom are concentrated
in the San Francisco Bay Area, argue that marijuana is safer
and has fewer side effects than commonly used stimulant
medications—and that it calms the anxiety and anger that can
so often accompany ADHD.
We’d ask them what they were smoking, but we suspect we
already know.
Seriously, prescribing marijuana for ADHD is, in general,
a terrible idea. Many teens with ADHD understandably wish
to be free of the worries and anxieties that plague them and,
given their common resistance to stimulant medication treat-
ments (which many, as we’ve noted, contend make them feel
shut down and less creative), gravitate toward such “natural”
treatments as smoking weed. Yet any study ever done, with
animals or humans, shows that that tetrahydrocannabinol,
or THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, disrupts attention,
memory, and concentration, the very functions already com-
promised in people with the disorder.
Researchers have also linked the use of marijuana by ado-
lescents to increased risk of psychosis and even schizophrenia
for people genetically predisposed to those illnesses. Regular
marijuana use beginning prior to mid-adolescence is reliably
associated with loss of IQ points in the following years, even
after the use is discontinued. Chronic smoking in adolescence
is highly likely to lead to addiction. Even the consent forms
handed out by MediCann, a chain of doctors who prescribe
medical marijuana in San Francisco, have listed possible
downsides including “mental slowness,” memory problems,
nervousness, confusion, rapid heartbeat, and difficulty in
154 ADHD

completing complex tasks. “Some patients can become depen-

dent on marijuana,” the form specifically warns.
Until the age of 18, patients requesting medical mari-
juana must be accompanied both to prescribing doctors
and to the dispensaries by a parent or authorized caregiver.
In some cases, worried parents have helped their children
obtain medical marijuana cards so that they wouldn’t have
to buy the drug on the street or be arrested for illegal pos-
session. Whatever you think of this practice, remember that
more than 40 percent of high school students say they’ve
tried marijuana, and there’s little a parent can do to pre-
vent that. Frankly, unless the laws change, we understand
why parents of impulsive, risk-taking kids would want to
minimize the chances of their ending up in juvenile hall
on a charge of possession or buy tainted substances on the
street.
Nonetheless, we’ll repeat: Encouraging chronic marijuana
use in adolescents, with or without ADHD, has major down-
sides. Moreover, there’s no good evidence that it helps with
the disorder and lots of evidence that it can be harmful. The
bottom line: Just say no.

How Helpful are Computer Training Programs?

Computer-assisted brain training has become one of our anx-
ious era’s fastest-growing industries. Aging boomers are inter-
ested in such training out of the fear that they’re losing their
edge. Parents of children with learning disabilities have also
tuned in, with the hope of finding a way to improve their kids’
focus without medication. Researchers have found evidence
that some versions of these programs may be effective for
preschoolers with ADHD, and neuroscientists and clinicians
expect that one day, consistent training in the basics of cogni-
tive performance, including working memory and executive
functions, will constitute a solid brick in the foundation of
ADHD interventions.
 What Do You Need to Know About the “ADHD Industrial Complex”? 155

The trick here is to separate the research-backed programs

from the considerable hype. Amid a rising number of purport-
edly efficient brain-training programs, the one that stands
out at this writing for having the most substantial research
backing is Cogmed, an intensive, 5-week-long plan developed
by Swedish researcher Torkel Klingberg in conjunction with
Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute. The program’s goal is to
improve working memory (see Chapter 1)—the ability to hold
several pieces of information in mind at once, which is often
compromised in people with ADHD. Cogmed comes with the
twin hurdles of a hefty price and substantial required invest-
ment of time. At last check, the program called for its par-
ticipants to train with the help of a certified coach, usually a
psychologist, who can be expected to charge between $1,000
and $2,000. Cogmed also requires a child to complete roughly
40 minutes of training exercises, 5 days a week, for 5 weeks.
And this is a lot to ask, given the still-unclear evidence that it
can truly help people with ADHD.
Research shows that as a general rule working memory
can improve with this kind of intervention. Nonetheless,
there is still doubt as to whether such gains can translate into
real-world academic and social success for people with ADHD.
Independent studies of Cogmed have been limited, and recent
reviews of research are far more pessimistic than the original
claims.
Considerably more speculative are other types of brain-
training programs, particularly some of the home-based
neurofeedback machines that have been marketed by com-
panies with names like SmartBrain Technologies and the
Learning Curve. These entrepreneurs offer equipment pur-
ported, respectively, to “pump the neurons” and “make
lasting changes in attention, memory, mood, control, pain,
sleep and more.” A North Carolina firm called Unique
Logic and Technology has reportedly sold several thousand
“Play Attention” systems, for $1,800 a piece, advertised as
“a sophisticated advancement of neurofeedback” to improve
156 ADHD

a child’s focus, behavior, academic performance and social

behavior.
The FDA regulates all biofeedback equipment as medi-
cal devices. As of this writing, however, the only approved
use for any of them is for relaxation. A spokesperson for the
International Society for Neurofeedback and Research cau-
tioned that home-based neurofeedback machines should
never be used without experienced supervision, given the risk
that unskilled use could interfere with medications or prompt
an anxiety attack or even a seizure.

What is Coaching, and How Much Can it Help People

with ADHD?
A vibrant “life-coaching” industry has emerged in the United
States over the past 20 years, with a faction explicitly devoted to
people with ADHD. Many adults with ADHD who are adverse
to pursuing traditional psychotherapy indeed may be helped
by a “coach” who limits the support to practical matters such
as time-management, job-performance, bill-paying, and cop-
ing with stress while in some cases also working with clients
to help set long-term goals. Coaching may be done by phone
as well as in face-to-face meetings, offering more flexibility
than traditional psychotherapy. Unlike some other forms of
therapy, it is not covered by health insurance plans. One influ-
ential ADHD coach, Nancy Ratey, says that coaching is based
on a “ ‘wellness’ model, intended to improve daily function-
ing and well-being for individuals without significant psycho-
logical impairment. This places coaching more in the realm of
an educational process as opposed to a treatment process.” In
other words, people with ADHD who also suffer significant
anxiety, depression, or substance abuse, should instead see a
licensed therapist.
A major problem with the coaching industry, at least to
date, is its overall lack of standards and oversight. There is
 What Do You Need to Know About the “ADHD Industrial Complex”? 157

no specific educational requirement or licensing program for

coaches as there is for therapists, including psychologists,
psychiatrists, social workers, and marriage and family coun-
selors. Instead, coaches can be certified by any one of several
professional organizations, the most formidable being the
ADHD Coaches Organization, which has issued guidelines
for the types and levels of experience needed to become an
associate, full, or master coach. These coaches can be certified,
that is, but many are not, even as they may still call them-
selves coaches. More importantly, there has been no rigor-
ously controlled scientific research support for the benefits of
coaching, compared to the plentiful support for medication
and behavior therapy.

How Useful are Other Alternative Treatments for ADHD?

The list of other unconventional treatments purported to help
people with ADHD (as well as with a host of other ailments
such as autism and anxiety) is too long to include in its entirety.
It features such eclectic strategies as St. John’s wort supple-
ments, swimming with dolphins, massage, music classes,
acupuncture, and chelation (removal of lead and other miner-
als from the body). As a group, these fall under the heading
of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), and they
are popular with the many Americans who are skeptical or
worried about conventional treatment with medication.
The most recent major reviews of CAMs for ADHD con-
clude, unfortunately, that none of the professed interventions—
including chiropractic, acupuncture, transcranial magnetic
stimulation, anthroposophic therapies, exposure to green
space (part of what’s called attention restoration therapy), and
homeopathy—has enough evidence of efficacy to even come
close to being a front-line treatment for ADHD. It’s a perplex-
ing world out there in the ADHD industrial complex, and once
again, an extremely cautious approach is in order.
158 ADHD

What, if Any, Evidence Supports Mindfulness Meditation

for ADHD?
“Mindfulness” practices, including meditation and yoga,
have been growing in worldwide popularity. A 2007 National
Health Interview survey, the most recent such survey avail-
able, reported that more than 20 million Americans now
meditate regularly and more than 13 million practice yoga.
It’s reasonable to think that any practice in focusing attention
would be helpful for people who have trouble with that skill,
and in fact researchers who’ve studied the question report
some intriguing results. In 2008, a team of researchers at the
Mindfulness Research Center at the University of California
at Los Angeles reported on a pilot study of 24 adults and eight
teenagers with ADHD. They found “significant” improve-
ments in self-reported symptoms of ADHD, anxiety, depres-
sion, and stress, with the gains continuing 3 months after the
training was completed. Although this study lacked a control
group, a larger Australian study found similar improvements,
while a 2010 pilot study at Duke University found that ado-
lescents and adults with ADHD who practiced mindfulness
showed improvement in working memory and the ability to
shift attention.
We believe the evidence to date in this field is encouraging
but still far from conclusive. Under the right circumstances,
there’s no question that meditation—and perhaps even bet-
ter, yoga, for people who have trouble sitting still—can help
reduce stress and anxiety, both major problems for most peo-
ple with ADHD. That’s reason enough to add it to your treat-
ment regimen but not to try substituting it for the mainstream
strategies of behavior therapy, cognitive-behavior therapy (for
adults), and medication.
Some clinicians have been working on extending prin-
ciples of mindfulness—including thoughtful consideration
of alternatives in heated moments and not allowing strong
emotions to cloud judgment or compel hasty action—to
 What Do You Need to Know About the “ADHD Industrial Complex”? 159

parent management interventions for families of children with

ADHD. Mark Bertin, a pediatrician with strong interest in this
area, has produced promising training procedures along these
lines, but conclusive evidence awaits sound research.

When Might it Make Sense to Enlist an Occupational Therapist?

An occupational therapist, or “OT,” can be a valuable member
of a child’s treatment team. To be blunt, OTs usually charge
much less per hour than a medical specialist or psychologist
and can help the child practice and improve a variety of skills
including handwriting, tying shoes, catching and throw-
ing a ball, relating to other kids, and organizing a backpack.
Typically, an OT will have a master’s degree and be profession-
ally certified and licensed by the state government. Some are
based at schools, while others work in hospitals and clinics or
in private practice.
Sometimes OTs will go beyond the conventional realms of
organization and basic coordination to work in other fields,
which is where the practice runs into controversy. For instance,
some aim to treat issues such as sensory integration problems
(see Chapter 4) with practices designed to regulate sensory
input, such as controlled spinning movements and balancing
exercises. These sorts of endeavors simply don’t have evidence
to support them. On the other hand, there is good support for
other practices that many OTs use to help chronically over-
whelmed kids, including tutoring them in taking “sensory
breaks” between sessions of stressful deskbound work, or
advising them to eat lunch outside if the cafeteria bustle is too
much for them.

How Can You Be a Smart Consumer?

There is much you can do to avoid losing out to greedy hucksters
and other perils stemming from the ADHD industrial complex.
160 ADHD

It starts with your commitment to educate yourself and

become an expert on your particular brain, or that of your
child. As soon as you suspect that one of you might be affected
by ADHD, look for high-quality resources to provide the fun-
damentals (this book can help, as can the other books and
websites we list at the end). And when surfing the web, be
skeptical of postings you see on a site that ends with .com.
Remember, “.com” means “commercial.” Choose .gov or .edu
instead.
Next comes the diagnosis. Shop around for your clinician.
Seek references from your pediatrician or internist or talk to
families who are in the same boat but a few leagues ahead. Or
contact your local ADHD support group to ask who’s the best
mental health professional in your town.
When making the appointment, don’t be afraid to ask the
clinician or his or her receptionist about his or her experience
and leanings (i.e., pro- or antimedication; experienced or not in
behavior therapy.) A good question to ask is how many people
with ADHD the professional has treated. Queries about edu-
cational background and specialty training are important, too.
Another valid question, if it seems to be in doubt, is whether
the therapist believes the disorder exists!
Organize your questions and concerns before your first
meeting. And if after all of your reference-collecting, a doc-
tor or therapist tries to tell you that you either do or don’t
have ADHD based on a meeting lasting 15 minutes or fewer,
don’t accept it. Take the time to look for someone with higher
standards.
Similarly, when hiring an occupational therapist, don’t hesi-
tate to ask for proof of professional accreditation. You can seek
a referral through a hospital in your area or check with the
American Occupational Therapy Association. Be on the alert
for those who translate all symptoms of ADHD (or most other
child mental health conditions) to sensory integration issues.
Follow a similar path if you try neurofeedback. It’s best in this
case to start your search for a therapist with a professional
 What Do You Need to Know About the “ADHD Industrial Complex”? 161

network such as the Biofeedback Certification International

Alliance.
Don’t make any snap judgments about buying or signing
up for programs or equipment or books or supplements or
classes you see advertised on the Internet. When tempted, give
yourself a cooling-off period. And don’t ever get on Amazon
late at night or after a glass or two of wine.

Focusing On: The ADHD Industrial Complex

The ADHD industrial complex is our term for the
ever-expanding marketplace of treatments, programs, ser-
vices, and commodities on sale purportedly to help “cure” or
reduce ADHD symptoms. It’s a buyer-beware situation that
behooves you to educate yourself and also cultivate sufficient
self-control to avoid lurching between promised panaceas.
Given the characteristic problems of impulsivity and anxi-
ety, people with ADHD can be particularly easy marks for
unscrupulous and unregulated entrepreneurs who’ve been
undeterred by the lack of scientific evidence for supposed
miracle-cure herbal remedies, exotic exercise regimens, and
purportedly diagnostic brain scans. Some of the methods we
describe above, including occupational therapy sessions and
coaching, may work wonders for some people. Nonetheless,
we include them in this chapter dealing with more specula-
tive approaches because of both the lack of empirical evi-
dence to support them and because individual therapists in
this field can vary so greatly in the way they do their jobs.
Similarly, we address cognitive training in working mem-
ory in this section—even though it has some supportive
evidence—because we believe that its benefits have been exag-
gerated by purveyors. The risk in all of these more question-
able strategies is that you can easily waste a lot of time, energy,
and money by pursuing these schemes that would be more
wisely invested in evidence-based treatments such as behav-
ior therapy, cognitive-behavior therapy, and medication.
 11
CONCLUSIONS AND
RECOMMENDATIONS

Can America’s Rate of ADHD Diagnoses Continue to Grow?

Indeed, it can. Even as, currently, a shocking one in five
American boys has been diagnosed with ADHD, we believe
this rate could escalate to one in four, or—in a worst-case
scenario—even one in three over the next decade. In fact, in
a few southern states, the rate for boys is already that high.
Hold onto your seats and consider some of the powerful fac-
tors spurring this growth:

• Performance pressures in US classrooms show little

sign of abating.
Admissions to top colleges are ever more difficult to
obtain, especially considering the continual increase
in national and international competition. As teen-
agers and their families seek an edge, increasing
numbers of them may seek a diagnosis to get accom-
modations on college-entrance exams and placement
tests—as well as access to medication designed to
boost performance.
• Adults have become the fastest-growing market for
ADHD diagnoses and medications, and they have lots
of room to catch up with kids.
Adults have yet to be diagnosed at rates approaching the
likely prevalence of ADHD for their age range.
164 ADHD

• Preschoolers have become a brand-new market.

In 2011, the American Academy of Pediatrics released
guidelines that lowered the age at which children can be
diagnosed with and treated for ADHD. Guidelines for
the previous decade had covered children only begin-
ning at age 6, but the new rules lowered that to 4. The
Academy said it was acting on emerging new evidence
that makes it possible to spot the disorder at an earlier
age and emphasized the need to start treatment as soon
as possible. Another factor sure to increase preschool
diagnoses is huge interest and substantial investment in
pre-K and transitional-K programs nationwide. As pre-
school enrollment expands, ever-increasing numbers of
distracted preschoolers will be required to sit still under
the scrutiny of their teachers. Without careful attention
to this new constituency, ADHD diagnoses could soar in
the post-toddler set.
• It’s easier than ever to get a diagnosis.
In the latest step in what has been a continuing trend,
the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual, the DSM-5, released in 2013, further relaxed the
required criteria to be diagnosed with ADHD. For exam-
ple, symptoms can now have first occurred before age
12 instead of by early childhood. Also, instead of requir-
ing impairment in more than one setting, clinicians now
must find only that several symptoms are present in
more than one setting. For anyone aged 17 or older, only
five symptoms are now needed instead of the six pre-
viously required and still needed for younger children.
Some of these changes are based on research findings,
even as they lower the bar for diagnoses.
• Growing numbers of premature and very small babies
are being born—and surviving.
Recall that low birthweight is a contributing cause of
ADHD. From 1980 to 2006, the percentage of infants born
with low birthweights increased slowly and steadily,
to reach 8.3 percent of all births, although that trend
 Conclusions and Recommendations 165

has since appeared to level off. Research suggests the

increase in multiple births after 1980, in part due to
more women seeking fertility treatments, contributed
to this trend, while the rate of low birth-weights among
singleton newborns also grew. As medical procedures
improve, more babies are surviving risky pregnancies,
with many being born prematurely and at low weights.
• Expanding access to healthcare insurance makes it
likelier than ever that more clinicians will be identify-
ing and treating ADHD.
If the Affordable Care Act continues to survive legal and
judicial challenges, it could become one of the greatest
spurs to increasing ADHD diagnoses. In its most relevant
mechanisms, which tip the scales toward more use of
services, the new national law extends coverage to young
adults under their parents' policies, levies penalties for
failures to obtain health insurance, expands Medicaid,
and requires coverage for preexisting conditions.

In light of all these factors, it’s more than likely that ADHD
diagnoses and treatment, including new prescriptions for
medication, will continue to increase in the United States—a
bellwether for the rest of the world. The biggest potentially
countervailing factor would be a popular backlash against
the seeming epidemic and in particular against the cursory
diagnoses that have undoubtedly inflated the overall rates of
diagnosis. That backlash could come from any one of several
directions. In particular, if abuse of stimulant medication con-
tinues to increase and claims more casualties, public alarm
might force professional groups to tighten restrictions for
diagnosis and treatment. At the same time, national academic
testing firms and college proctors may react to perceived
exploitation of the diagnosis and tighten their own eligibility
requirements for accommodations.
Another potential countervailing force could come in what
economists call “demand shock,” as increasing numbers of
166 ADHD

Americans seek assessments and treatments from a dwindling

supply of trained professionals. Even more, if the economy
slips into recession once again, and in particular if out-of-
pocket costs for medical care increase, ADHD diagnosis and
treatment may come to be viewed as a luxury.
Considering the sum of all these of these forces, our predic-
tion is that this locomotive won’t slow down any time soon.
Still, we expect—and would welcome—a leveling off and even
decline over the next several years to levels that are found in
the rest of the world. Although we surely encourage people
with genuine problems to seek a diagnosis and treatment,
we’d also dearly like to see more rigorous assessments and
tighter requirements for accommodations to shut off the spigot
of questionable diagnoses.

How are Big Pharmaceutical Firms Influencing the

Surge in ADHD Diagnoses?
Hmm, let’s count the ways. Big Pharma has been aggressive
and ingenious both in and outside the United States in mar-
keting its wares to treat ADHD. Major pharmaceutical firms
have sponsored research, paid generous consultant fees to
leading experts in the field, pressed medication samples on
pediatricians, contributed hefty sums to national advocacy
groups such as Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/
Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) (the annual conferences of
which are rife with brand-name banners, tote bags, and other
pharma-paraphernalia), and even sponsored a Facebook page
for mothers of children with ADHD. The everyday consumer,
however, is most likely to encounter this influence in glossy
advertisements in popular magazines, such as People, showing
Norman Rockwellian scenes of seemingly happily medicated
children doing chores or homework.
We hope we don’t sound too cynical. But the fact is that only
two developed nations at last count—the United States and
New Zealand—allow pharmaceutical companies to directly
 Conclusions and Recommendations 167

advertise prescription medications to consumers. Prior to

the late 1990s, the only advertisements for medications were
found in medical journals. In a major shift, the Food and Drug
Administration made it much easier to target ads directly to
consumers, in a policy it argued would increase competition
and consumer choice. Since that time, direct-to-consumer
(DTC) ads have become a multi-billion-dollar annual enter-
prise, as US pharma firms have taken maximum advantage of
their opportunity.
We grant that the ads, extending to the Internet and TV,
have helped make treatment available and have major poten-
tial to reduce shame and stigma. But we also worry that these
ads have been a big factor in pushing up the rates of overdiag-
nosis of conditions including ADHD. The advertisements for
ADHD medications tend to flourish at the time of release of
expensive, new, patented medications, and then subside when
less-expensive generic formulations of the medication come to
the market.
Medical journals in particular have profited from this reve-
nue stream. As the New York Times noted in a 2013 article titled
“The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder,” a prominent pub-
lication in the field, the Journal of the American Academy of Child
and Adolescent Psychiatry, went from no ads for ADHD medica-
tions from 1990 to 1993 to about 100 pages per year a decade
later. The Times described a 2009 ad for the nonstimulant drug
Intuniv as showing a boy in a monster suit taking off his hairy
mask to smile at the camera. “There’s a great kid in there,” the
text read. The medication’s many side effects were listed, as
required, but in exceptionally tiny print.
Other pitches to consumers have been subtler. McNeil
Pediatrics’ ADHD Moms Facebook page featured seemingly
mainstream mothers boasting about the benefits of medication
for their children. You had to look closely to see that the page
was being sponsored by a medication firm. “After dinner one
night my son sat and played with Lego for hours it seemed,
he looked so happy, peaceful, and I turned to my husband
168 ADHD

and said, ‘We did good,’ ” wrote Michelle Goodman-Beatty, a

mother of four, and one of the page’s more than 8,000 “fans.”
Elsewhere, the page had a mother claiming that ADHD medi-
cations reduce the chance of substance abuse—a claim that as
we've noted has not been borne out by research. The page also
featured comments from a pediatrician counseling mothers to
keep their kids taking their stimulants on weekends, holidays,
and school breaks, which is far from the consensus of many
ADHD experts, who suggest that children take medication
breaks.
Beginning in the year 2000, the Food and Drug Adminis­
tration has repeatedly chastened pharmaceutical firms for false
and misleading ads and on several occasions required such ads
to be withdrawn—instructing drug companies to cancel them
for being false and misleading or exaggerating the effects of the
medication. As the New York Times has reported, Shire agreed
in early 2013 to pay $57.5 million in fines partly stemming from
charges of improper advertising (including unwarranted claims
about benefits) of several medications, including Vyvanse,
Adderall XR, and Daytrana, a patch that delivers stimulant med-
ication through the skin.

What Impact, if Any, Have State Policies Had in the

Rise in Diagnoses?
In Chapter 6, we described one big way that state policies have
made a difference in recent years: Those states that prioritize
test scores via accountability legislation had a quick jump in
diagnoses, particularly for low-income youth, as schools put
pressure on their most distracted students to be diagnosed
and treated.
More recently, however, some US states have joined a back-
lash against the growing numbers of diagnoses and prescrip-
tions by instituting laws to try to stem the tide. Some of these
laws have been inspired by parents’ lobbying of state officials
in the wake of notorious cases involving the medications. In
 Conclusions and Recommendations 169

one widely publicized case in 2000, for instance, a county med-

ical examiner in Michigan blamed Ritalin for the heart attack
that killed a 14-year-old Michigan boy named Matthew Smith,
who had been taking the medication for the previous 10 years.
That same year in Connecticut, the New Canaan school dis-
trict told Sheila Matthews that her son, then 7 years old, had
ADHD and needed to be given medication. Matthews resisted
the guidance and instead cofounded an alliance against
schools’ involvement in diagnoses.
The backlash in state agencies and legislatures began in
1999, when the Colorado State Board of Education passed
a resolution urging school personnel to use academic solu-
tions rather than psychotropic drugs to resolve problems with
behavior, attention, and learning. This was followed by at least
45 other bills and resolutions, with laws that have passed or
are still pending in 28 states.
Beginning in 2001, a particularly resolute group of 14 states,
with Connecticut leading the way, enacted laws specifically
attempting to strengthen the rights of parents who refuse to
medicate their children and to curb the influence of teach-
ers and schools in promoting such treatment. The states have
tackled these issues chiefly with three strategies: statutes that
specifically prohibit school employees from recommending
medication, bans on school requirements that children take
psychotropic medications as a condition of enrollment, and
guarantees that a family can’t be charged with child neglect
for refusing to medicate a child.
These laws have had major impacts. The 14 states that
enacted them have been marked exceptions to the rapid
increase in ADHD diagnoses throughout the rest of the United
States. In fact, rates of diagnosis remained flat in these states
from 2003 to 2012, even as they rose sharply in the rest of the
nation.
Our own view on this subject is that teachers must be part
of the assessment of any child for ADHD. Without such infor-
mation, it’s all but impossible to determine whether a student
170 ADHD

is sufficiently impaired in the classroom to validate a diagno-

sis. At the same time, the vast majority of teachers is not ade-
quately trained to be trusted to counsel parents on medication
treatment and shouldn’t be doing so.

What Needs to Be Done to Foster Greater Understanding of the

Reality of ADHD in Girls and Women?
In Chapter 6 we detailed some of the potentially serious con-
sequences for girls and women with ADHD whose symptoms
are sufficiently subtle to escape diagnosis and treatment. Given
both the comparative difficulty in detecting ADHD in young
girls (versus boys), and the particular dangers of girls’ develop-
ing comorbid problems, such as anxiety, depression, eating dis-
orders, and self-harm, we believe there should be much more
research and media focus on feminine ADHD in the years to
come. Specifically, mental health professionals, school employ-
ees, and parents must become more aware that girls can and do
suffer the symptoms of ADHD, even as many such girls’ symp-
toms include comparatively subtle difficulties with organiza-
tion and focus rather than severe impulsivity or hyperactivity.
One challenge here is that while poster boys and poster
men for ADHD have become fairly familiar (think David
Neeleman, Jim Carrey, Michael Phelps, and James Carville),
the same can’t be said for successful women with ADHD,
although Paris Hilton’s name keeps coming up. This makes
it hard to emphasize the serious risks of the disorder while
showing that happiness and achievements are still possible.
Efforts to build awareness in this realm should also empha-
size that the same major evidence-based treatments work just
as well for girls and women as they do for boys and men.
Out of concern for the special hardships faced by females
with ADHD, some mental health experts have advocated spe-
cial treatment for women and girls that would include redefin-
ing the disorder. Their suggestions have included expanding
the list of symptoms to include “hyperverbal” behavior that is
 Conclusions and Recommendations 171

more commonly observed in girls and to require fewer symp-

toms to diagnose ADHD in girls. To justify such a change, how-
ever, we believe researchers need to show that lower symptom
thresholds in females are linked to high levels of impairment.
So far, the research on this issue is mixed.
Any change in the way we define ADHD brings up a
dilemma. On the one hand, girls shouldn’t be held to the same
diagnostic standards as boys if doing so means that many
truly impaired children can’t get help. On the other hand, any
further loosening of standards for a diagnosis may risk open-
ing the floodgates even more at a time when many children
are already being diagnosed unnecessarily. We’re therefore
not great fans of changing the standards for ADHD, even as
we do think a lot more could be done to raise awareness of the
special hardships faced by girls with the disorder, in order to
make sure they are identified and helped.

What Do Today’s High Rates of ADHD Say about Our Culture? Is

this a Warning Sign We Need to Address?
If you’ve been reading between the lines up until now, you
should easily guess the answer to this one. Yes, we believe
it’s a warning sign. The startling rates of increase in this
disorder—and in particular, in the obvious overdiagnosis of
ADHD throughout America—speaks volumes about the state
of the United States in the twenty-first century.
To be sure, some of the signs are truly positive. The high
rates of ADHD tell us that millions of families are now braving
the stigma of mental illness to seek help for their children—and
that perhaps, in the process, shame and silence are starting to
abate. They tell us that doctors have learned a lot more about
how to identify and help people who were previously com-
pletely at the mercy of a truly impairing disorder. They also
tell us that many of us are embracing the difficult challenge
of trying to understand the variability of human brains—and
that, in many cases, we’re willing to adapt our expectations
172 ADHD

and, at least in some cases, our classrooms and job sites, to

accommodate such differences.
At the same time, as we head into a future in which it’s not
impossible that more than one in four boys will end up with
an ADHD diagnosis, we have to understand that apart from
all the incentives to get diagnosed these days (including gov-
ernment aid and accommodations at school), there may just be
a major mismatch between our evolving brains and the way
we live our lives. An obvious problem, too, is the increasing air
and water pollution that, as we detailed in Chapter 3, may be
contributing to the numbers of births of children with ADHD.
These high rates are also telling us that we need to do more to
provide better prenatal care so as to reduce the high rates of
babies with low birth-weights and potentially rein in extrava-
gant fertility treatments that can lead to multiple births. The
rising rates of ADHD are additionally telling us that we need
to do more to reduce the high numbers of teenage pregnancies
and to improve nutrition for pregnant mothers. Better educa-
tion for expectant parents about smoking and alcohol use dur-
ing pregnancy is a related and essential step.
Finally, as we’ve suggested, the rising rates of ADHD also
strongly suggest that we review and reconfigure an educa-
tional system that increasingly has tied children’s success at
school to performance on high-stakes standardized tests. This
prevalent pressure to constantly rate and track and measure
our children is part of a bigger trend toward more competitive,
hurried, and unsatisfying lives. It hits home with particular
poignancy when you think back to the fact that four in 10 high
school seniors at several affluent California schools have taken
prescription stimulants as study aids, even as hospital admis-
sions from adverse effects of the medications continue to rise.
Children with and without ADHD deserve better schools,
teachers, and educational policies, to accommodate individ-
ual learning styles and replace our current narrow focus on
results from standardized tests with more humane and inno-
vative strategies to encourage their talents and eagerness to
 Conclusions and Recommendations 173

learn. We’re all for high academic standards, including the

Common Core, but high-test-scores-or-bust policies contribute
to unintended bad outcomes, such as fast-rising ADHD diag-
noses among the nation’s poorest children.
The good news here is that accommodations designed for
kids who are restless and easily bored usually end up bringing
out the best in their classmates as well. Such changes might
include less rote homework, more positive reinforcement, more
physical activity built into the day, and more out-of-the-chair
activities, such as teamwork on projects. Note that we’re not
advocating for a permissive set of open classrooms. Children
with ADHD, and most children in general, do best when
warmth, understanding, and encouragement are matched by
high expectations and structure.

What Would Some Sensible, Evidence-Based Policies Look

Like to Prevent Overdiagnosis and Underdiagnosis and
Most Effectively Cope with ADHD?
The evidence clearly supports the fact that many American
children today are being wrongly diagnosed with and/or
over-medicated for ADHD. One major study, published in the
year 2000 in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry, found that up to half of children receiv-
ing stimulant medications in a large sample from the Great
Smoky Mountains region of the southeastern United States
lacked a valid diagnosis of ADHD.
The trouble isn’t in a lack of professional standards for
assessments. Both the American Academy of Pediatrics and
the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
offer detailed guidelines for thorough evaluations. But most
of the time, the guidelines are simply not followed. Instead,
the all-too-common practice throughout the United States is
a quick-and-dirty diagnosis in fewer than 15 minutes, which
sadly results not only in grossly inflated diagnoses but also in
many children who need treatment being missed.
174 ADHD

The main problem is that the majority of psychologists who

diagnose ADHD and of physicians who prescribe medica-
tion haven’t been adequately trained, nor are they adequately
reimbursed for careful monitoring. The incentives are mostly
geared toward those short office visits and not for the thor-
ough and multipart assessments that would draw in parents
and teachers to offer perspectives on a child’s performance
outside of the doctor’s office. All too often, incentives are also
lacking for a doctor to keep track of how a child or adult is
faring on a prescribed medication and whether side effects are
discouraging its use. As for behavior therapy, which should
be a key part of treatment for children, incentives are nearly
nil, given that few insurance companies reimburse for it and
insufficient numbers of professionals are trained in it.
Beyond the problem of bad diagnoses is that of poorly con-
ceived policies that have encouraged many people without
a genuine disorder to seek a diagnosis to qualify for accom-
modations in school or for national tests. Colleges and testing
firms need to set more rigorous standards about who can qual-
ify for special privileges. One interesting solution is to allow
accommodations for anyone requesting them—but then offi-
cially indicate that their test scores have been obtained with
accommodations. At least in this scenario, there would be not
be the current “run” on accommodations that never get noted
in test-score reports.
As a model for future standards of diagnosis, we are
impressed by the Kaiser Permanente health maintenance
organization’s ADHD Best Practices Committee, for the
HMO’s Northern California region. For the past two decades,
leading physicians and psychologists in that group have
established and followed their own high-quality set of rules
for evidence-based evaluations and treatments that take
advantage of the special resources of the HMO, compared to
private practitioners. For example, they recommend that pre-
adolescent children be evaluated in a group with other kids,
a much more natural environment than the usual setting of
 Conclusions and Recommendations 175

a clinician’s office, surrounded by adults. The committee has

also developed its own set of standardized forms for collecting
information from teachers and parents. Best of all is that any
child evaluated for ADHD is guaranteed to be seen not just by
a psychologist or social worker or doctor limited to dispensing
medication but also by a team that is qualified and trained to
swiftly identify or rule out conditions that can mimic ADHD.
Kaiser also offers parent coaching and behavior therapy as
part of its plan, at least in some facilities.

Focusing On: The Future

The recent surge in ADHD diagnoses and treatment is quite
likely to continue for at least several more years. The reasons
are many, including recent loosening of diagnostic standards,
continuing incentives including government financial aid and
educational accommodations, the probable impacts of toxic
pollution and teen pregnancies, and unrelenting global com-
petitive pressures that are ramping up expectations in the
classroom and on the job. Major pharmaceutical firms have
also contributed to this trend, by funding ADHD research
and aggressively advertising stimulant medications to not just
mental health professionals but the general public. State and
federal laws will continue to have strong (if mixed) effects. On
the one hand, education policies tying performance on stan-
dardized tests to funding for schools, raising the pressure to
identify and treat any laggards, have raised rates of ADHD
diagnoses, particularly among children from families in pov-
erty. But in recent years, state laws banning teachers from
talking to parents about medication have slowed down the
juggernaut, compared with what’s happened in states without
such laws. A question, however, is whether such laws exclude
teachers from what could be valuable participation in the
assessment process.
Growing awareness about female ADHD may contribute
to the rising diagnoses in the near future, which could be
176 ADHD

beneficial for girls and women who historically have missed

out on potentially valuable help. Yet overall, our modern epi-
demic of ADHD offers warning signs about harmful trends in
our culture. One strong antidote could come from more and
better training and adequate compensation of mental health
professionals on the front lines. These practices, in turn, would
help improve adherence to professional standards, focusing
evidence-based treatment for people who genuinely need it
while reducing the cursory diagnoses now fueling the ADHD
epidemic.
 RESOURCES

Recommended Books
Ashley, S. (2005). The ADD and ADHD Answer Book: Professional
Answers to 275 of the Top Questions Parents Ask. Naperville,
IL: Sourcebooks.
Barkley, R. A. (2000). Taking Charge of ADHD: The Complete, Authoritative
Guide for Parents. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Barkley, R. A. (2012). Executive Functions: What They Are, How They
Work, and Why They Evolved. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Barkley, R. A. (2013). Defiant Children: A Clinician’s Manual for
Assessment and Parent Training. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Barkley, R. A. (Ed.). (2015). Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder: A Handbook for Diagnosis and Treatment (4th ed.).
New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Beauchaine, T. P., & Hinshaw, S. P. (2013). Child and Adolescent
Psychopathology (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Beauchaine, T. P., & Hinshaw, S. P. (Eds.). (2015). Oxford Handbook
of Externalizing Spectrum Disorders. New York, NY: Oxford
University Press.
Brown, T. E. (2013). A New Understanding of ADHD in Children and
Adults: Executive Function Deficits. New York, NY: Routledge.
Brown, T. E. (2014). Smart but Stuck: Emotions in Teens and Adults with
ADHD. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Wiley.
Denevi, T. (2014). Hyper: A Personal History of ADHD. New York,
NY: Simon & Schuster.
Ellison, K. (2010). Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention. New York,
NY: Hyperion Voice.
178 Resources

Greene, R. (2005). The Explosive Child: Understanding and Helping Easily

Frustrated, “Chronically Inflexible” Children. New York, NY: Harper
Paperbacks.
Hallowell, E., & Jensen, P. S. (2010). Superparenting for ADD: An
Innovative Approach to Raising Your Distracted Child. New York,
NY: Ballantine.
Hallowell, E., & Ratey, J. (2011). Driven to Distraction: Recognizing
and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder (Rev. ed.). New York,
NY: Anchor.
Harris, J. R. (1998). The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the
Way They Do. New York, NY: The Free Press.
Hinshaw, S. P. (2007). The Mark of Shame: Stigma of Mental illness and an
Agenda for Change. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Hinshaw, S. P. (2009). The Triple Bind: Saving Our Teenage Girls From
Today’s Pressures. New York, NY: Ballantine.
Hinshaw, S. P., & Scheffler, R. M. (2014). The ADHD Explosion: Myths,
Medication, Money, and Today’s Push for Performance. New York,
NY: Oxford University Press.
Mate, G. (1999). Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and
What You Can Do About It. New York, NY: Penguin.
Mischel, W. (2014). The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control.
New York, NY: Little, Brown.
Monastra, V. J. (2005). Parenting Children With ADHD: 10 Lessons That
Medicine Cannot Teach. Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association.
Nadeau, K. G., Littman, E. B., & Quinn, P. O. (2015). Understanding Girls
With ADHD (2nd ed). Washington, DC: Advantage Books.
Neven, R. S., Anderson, V., & Godber, T. (2002). Rethinking
ADHD: Integrated Approaches to Helping Children at Home and School.
Crows Nest, Australia: Allen & Unwin.
Newmark, S. D. (2010). ADHD Without Drugs: A Guide to the Natural
Care of Children With ADHD. Tucson, AZ: Nurtured Heart.
Nigg, J. T. (2006). What Causes ADHD: Understanding What Goes Wrong
and Why. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Pera, G. (2008). Is It You, Me, or Adult A.D.D.? Stopping the Roller
Coaster When Someone You Love Has Attention Deficit Disorder. San
Francisco, CA: 101 Alarm Press.
Pfiffner, L. J. (2011). All About ADHD: The Complete Practical Guide
for Classroom Teachers (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Scholastic
Professional Books.
 Resources 179

Power, T. J., Karustis, J. L., & Habboushe, D. F. (2001). Homework Success

for Children With ADHD: A Family-School Intervention Program.
New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Quinn, P. (2011). 100 Questions and Answers About Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity (ADHD) in Women and Girls. Sudbury, MA: Quinn &
Bartlett.
Ratey, J. J., with Hagerman, E. (2008). Spark: The Revolutionary New
Science of Exercise and the Brain. New York, NY: Little, Brown.
Rose, L. T., with Ellison, K. (2013). Square Peg: My Story and What It
Means for Raising Innovators, Visionaries, and Out-of-the-Box Thinkers.
New York, NY: Hyperion.
Safren, S. A., Sprich, S., Perlman, C. A., & Otto, M. W. (2005). Mastering
Your Adult ADHD: A Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment Program.
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Solanto, M. V. (2011). Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Adult
ADHD: Targeting Executive Dysfunction. New York,
NY: Guilford Press.
Sparrow, E. P., & Erhardt, D. (2014). Essentials of ADHD Assessment for
Children and Adolescents. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Taylor, B. E. S. (2007) ADHD and Me: What I Learned From Lighting Fires
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Taylor, J. F. (2006). The Survival Guide for Kids With ADD or ADHD.
Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit.
Tuckman, A. (2009). More Attention, Less Deficit: Success Strategies for
Adults With ADHD. Plantation, FL: Specialty Press.
Wilens, T. E. (2008). Straight Talk About Psychiatric Medications for Kids
(3rd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Wright, S. D. (2014). ADHD Coaching Matters: The Definitive Guide.
College Station, TX: ACO Books.

Journals That Feature Primary Research Articles About ADHD

ADHD Attention-Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorders
JAMA Psychiatry
Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology
Journal of Attention Disorders
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
180 Resources

Internet Resources
Centers for Disease Control: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/
National Institute of Mental Health: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/
health/publications/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder/
index.shtml
Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
(CHADD), offering news about the advocacy group and articles of
interest: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=chadd
ADDitude Magazine online (CHADD’s national magazine): http://
www.additudemag.com/index.html/
National Resource Center on ADHD (a project of CHADD): http://
www.help4adhd.org/
ADHD Coaches Organization: http://www.adhdcoaches.org/
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Provider
Finder: http://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/
Resources/CAP_Finder.aspx
 INDEX

Abikoff, Howard, 128–129 diagnosis and, 43

Abuse, 56–57, 70 symptoms and presentation
Academic pressure. See in, 71–72
Performance pressure taking medicines, 95–96
Academics, effects of ADHD on, Advertising, 18, 166–167
66–67, 69 Affection, parental, 34
Accidents, 70–71, 83 Affordable Care Act, 165
Accountability, 168–170 African Americans, 84
Acupuncture, 157 AFTA. See Saudi ADHD Society
ADD. See Attention deficit Age, xvii. See also Adolescents;
disorder Adults; Children
Adderall, 96, 114, 168 Age of Enlightenment, 20
Additives, 135–136 Air pollution, 172
ADHD Best Practices Committee, Alcohol abuse, 60, 70
174–175 Alcohol exposure, 28
ADHD Coaches All About ADHD (Pfiffner), 127
Organization, 157 Allergies, 58
The ADHD Explosion (Hinshaw Alzheimer’s disease, 152
and Scheffler), 86 Ambiguity, xvi
ADHD industrial complex. See Amen, Daniel, 151–152
Industrial complex American Academy of Child
ADHD Without Drugs and Adolescent Psychiatry,
(Newmark), 140 53–54, 173
Adolescents, 69–71, 107–108 American Academy of Pediatrics,
Adoptive parents, 36 53–54, 136, 164, 173
Adults. See also Age American Occupational Therapy
continuing growth in Association, 160
rate of diagnosis American Psychiatric
and, 163 Association, 106, 138
182 Index

American Society of Health- social skills groups, 127–128

System Pharmacists, 112 use at school, 125–129
Amphetamines, 96, 97, 99 Benzedrine, 97
Ancestry, 25–27 Bertin, Mark, 159
Antidepressants, 96 Biofeedback, 140–143, 155–156,
Anxiety disorders, 54–56, 59 160–161
APD. See Auditory processing Biofeedback Certification
disorder International Alliance, 161
Appetite, 102 Biology, context and, xxii
Arithmetic pill, 97 Bipolar disorder, 55
Armodafinil, 96 Birthweight, 27, 29, 86, 164–165
Artificial colors, 136 Bishop, Dorothy, 150–151
Aspirin, 139 Bisphenol A, 28–29
Assessment. See Diagnosis Blood pressure medications,
Atomoxetine, 101, 103 101–102
Attachment patterns, 33–34 Blue light, 41
Attention, ADHD as deficit Bradley, Charles, 97
of, 8–10 Brain injuries, 58
Attention deficit disorder Brains
(ADD), 11–12 exercise and, 134
Auditory processing disorder gender and, 79
(APD), 55–56 medications and, 98–99
Authoritarian parenting, 34–35 medications and development
Authoritative parenting, of, 103–104
34, 123 overview of in people with
Autism, 10–11, 19–20, 27, 80 ADHD, 30–32
Brain scans, diagnostic, 151–152
Balance boards, 150 Brain waves, 49. See also
Barkley, Russell, 9, 122 Neurofeedback
Behavioral impulsivity, 80 Brazil, 117
Behavior modification, 120–121 Breggin, Peter, 105–106
Behavior therapy Brown, Thomas E., 98
benefits of, 109 Bulimia, 70
cognitive-behavior therapy, 109, Bupropion, 96
129–130 Burning, 83
direct contingency Bush, George W., 18
management, 120–121
effectiveness of, 100 Caffeine, 100
lack of incentives for, 174 “Call of Duty,” 40
with medications, 130–131 Calvinism, 105
for organization, 128–129 CAM. See Complementary and
overview of, 119–120, 131–132 alternative medicine
parent-training programs, Campbell, Susan, 35
121–125 Car accidents, 70–71, 83
 Index 183

Cardiac issues, 102 Cognitive-behavior therapy

Carrey, Jim, 170 (CBT), 109, 129–130
Cartoons, 39–40 Cognitive enhancement, 113–114
Carville, James, 170 Cognitive impulsivity, 80
Catapres, 101–102 Colorado State Board of
Causes of ADHD Education, 169
within brains, 30–32 Combined presentation, 5
environmental, 27–28 Common Core, 173
inherited, 25–27 Comorbid conditions, 58–61,
overview of, 41–42 170, xxii
parents and, 33–37 Complementary and alternative
schools, academic pressures medicine (CAM), 157–158
and, 37–38 Computer training programs,
video games, social media, and 154–156
other screen entertainment Concerta, 96, 116. See also
as, 38–41 Methylphenidate
CBT. See Cognitive-behavior Conduct disorder (CD), 59, 80
therapy Conflicts, 10
CD. See Conduct disorder Conflicts of interest, 51
Center for the Difficult Child, 145 Consequences of ADHD,
Central auditory processing 12, 81–83
disorder, 55–56 Consequential accountability, 87–
Cerebellum, 150 88
CHADD. See Children and Consumers, strategies for, 149,
Adults with Attention Deficit 159–161
Disorder Context, 75–76, xxii
Checklists, 46 Control, ADHD as lack of, 8–10
Chelation, 157 Controversy
Chemical exposure, 28, 172 attraction of, 49
Child abuse, 56–57 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
Children, 65–69, 164 and, 51
Children and Adults with overview of, xix–xx, xv–xvi
Attention Deficit Disorder Ritalin Wars, 104–106
(CHADD), 17, 105, 106, 166 Cortex development, 31–32
China, 90, 116 Costs of untreated ADHD, xviii
Church of Scientology, 105–106 Crichton, Alexander, 20–21
Cigarettes, 28, 60, 70 Cultural implications of current
Citizens Commission on Human diagnosis rates, 171–173
Rights, 105–106 Cutting, 83
Cliques, 67
Clonidine, 101–102, 103 Daily report cards (DRC),
Coaching, 156–157 125–126, 147
Coffee, 100 Darwin, Charles, 73
Cogmed, 155 Daytrana, 168
184 Index

DDAT. See Dyslexia dyspraxia varying rates in nations outside

attention treatment of U.S., 88–89
Definition of ADHD, 3–4 Diagnostic and Statistical
Delayed gratification, 8–10 Manual (DSM)
Demand shock, 165–166 continuing growth in rate of
Dementia, 152 diagnosis and, 164
Dependency, 112–113 diagnosis and, 45–46, 48
Depression, 55, 70 name in, 12
Desperate Housewives, 115 overview of, 50–52
Developmental-behavioral symptoms listed in, 5–6
pediatricians, 43 Diagnostic brain scans, 151–152
Developmental histories, 47 Diet, 135–137
Deviancy training, 127 Differential diagnosis, 54–58
Dexedrine, 96, 100 Direct contingency management,
Dextroamphetamine, 100 120–121
DHA. See Docosahexaenoic acid Direct-to-consumer (DTC)
Diagnosis ads, 167
co-existing conditions and, 58– Disorganization, as
61 symptom, 4–5
continuing growth in rate of, Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), 139
163–166 Doctors. See Pediatricians;
differential, 54–58 Psychiatrists; Psychologists
differing rates among Dolphins, swimming with, 157
states, 86–88 Dopamine
of inattentive form of brain function and, 30–31
ADHD, 61–62 fatty acids and, 138
increasing rates of, 16–20, heritability and, 26
85–86, xv medications and, 98, 107
lack of objective assessment receptors, 31
for, 49–50 Dore, Wynford, 150
neuropsychological testing Dore Program, 150–151
for, 52–53 Douglas, Virginia, 11–12
obtaining best possible, 62–63 DRC. See Daily report cards
persons qualified to DRD4-7 allele, 26, 35, 73–74
perform, 44–45 Driving, 70–71, 83
prevalence vs., 15–16 Drug abuse, 60, 70, 113–115
process for, 45–49 Drugs. See Medications;
professional guidelines Supplements
for, 53–54 DSM. See Diagnostic and
racial and economic groups Statistical Manual
and, 84–86 DTC ads. See Direct-to-consumer
reasons for evaluation and, 43– (DTC) ads
44 Dynevor Limited, 151
statistics on, xv Dyslexia, 55–56
 Index 185

Dyslexia dyspraxia attention “Fidgety Phil” description, 22

treatment (DDAT), 150–151 Fish, 138
Fish oil capsules, 139
Eating disorders, 70 504 Plans, 146
Economics, 84–86, 89–90, xviii fMRI. See Functional magnetic
Education, 23, 85. See also Schools resonance imaging
Education for All Handicapped Focalin, 96
Children Act, 85 Food and Drug Administration,
EEG. See Electroencephalograms 167, 168
EEG feedback. See Neurofeedback Friendships, 68
Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), 139 Frontal lobe, 31, 101
Einstein, Albert, 74–75 Functional magnetic resonance
Electroencephalograms (EEG), 49. imaging (fMRI), 32
See also Neurofeedback
Elimination diet, 136 Gender
Ellison, Katherine, xxi adolescence and, 70
Encephalitis, 22–23 diagnosis and, 19
Endocrine disruptors, 29 need for greater understanding
Endorphins, 134 of ADHD in girls and
Environment, impacts of, women and, 170–171
27–28, 33–41 rates and, 79–80
EPA. See Eicosapentaenoic acid stigma and, xvi
Essential fatty acids, 138 symptoms and presentation
Eugeroics, 96 and, 80–81
Eustulic, 101–102 trauma and, 56
Executive functions, problems video games and, 40
with, 6–7 Gene-environment
Exercise, 133–134 interaction, 27, 29
Externalizing behavioral Gene expression, 27, 35
problems, 80 Generalized anxiety disorder, 54
Eyberg, Sheila, 123 Genes, 26, 27, 73–74. See also
Inherited causes of ADHD
Facebook, 166, 167–168 Gift theory, 73–75
Family conflict, 68–69 Gingko biloba, 139
Family-focused therapy, Ginseng, 139
treatments and, 143–145 Glasser, Howard, 145
Farah, Martha, 152 Goodman-Beatty, Michelle, 168
Fatty acids, 137–138 Graduated licensing system,
Feingold, Benjamin, 135 70–71, 83
Feingold diet, 135–136 “Grand Theft Auto,” 40, 49
Females. See Gender Gratification, delayed, 8–10
Fernandez, Melanie A., 123 Greece, ancient, 20
Ferritin, 140 Guanfacine, 101–102, 103
Fetal alcohol effects, 28 Guendelman, Maya, 56
186 Index

Habit-forming medications, Individuals with Disabilities

112–113 Education Act (IDEA), 17, 85,
Hallowell, Edward, 34, 75, 122 146–147
Harris, Judith Rich, 33 Industrial complex (ADHD),
Head Start programs, 145 137–140
Healthgrades, 63 being a smart consumer and,
Health-impaired conditions, 85 159–161
Heart rate, 102 coaching, 156–157
Heavy metal exposure, 28 computer training programs,
Heritability, 25–27 154–156
Hilton, Paris, 170 marijuana and, 153–154
Hinshaw, Stephen, 34, 83, 86, xxi mindfulness practices and,
History of ADHD, 20–24 158–159
HKD. See Hyperkinetic occupational therapists
disorder and, 159
Hoffman, Heinrich, 22 overview of, 149, 161, xix–xx
Huffman, Felicity, 115 schemes to avoid, 150–152
Hunter-gatherers, 73 usefulness of, 157
Hyperactive/impulsive Inherited causes of ADHD, 25–27
presentation, 5 Insecure attachment, 33–34
Hyperactivity, as Insomnia, 57
symptom, 4–5 Insurance, 165
Hyperfocus, defined, 3 Intelligence quotient (IQ)
Hyperkinetic disorder (HKD), tests, 53
51–52 Internalizing behavioral
Hyperkinetic impulse problems, 80, 83
disorder, 23, 98 International Classification of
Hyperthyroidism, 57 Diseases (ICD), 51–52, 88
Hyperverbal behavior, 171 International Dyslexia
Hypothyroidism, 57 Association, 150
International Society for
ICD. See International Classification Neurofeedback and
of Diseases Research, 156
IDEA. See Individuals with Intuniv, 101–102
Disabilities Education Act IP. See Identified Patients
identified Patient (IP), 143 IQ tests, 53
Imaging studies, 32, 151–152 Iron, 140
Impulsivity, 4–5, 7, 80. See also Israel, 90
Self-control
Inattention, as symptom, 4–5 James, William, 21
Inattentive presentation, 5, Janssen Pharmaceuticals,
61–62, 82 Inc., 116
Incentives, 174 Jensen, Peter, 122
India, 89–90 JetBlue, 74
 Index 187

Kaiser Permanente health dependency and abuse risks

maintenance organization, and, 112–113
174–175 duration of benefits of, 106–107
Karolinska Institute, 155 earliest, 16–17
Kinko’s, 74 economics and, 89–90
Klingberg, Torkel, 155 function of, 98–101
funding for, 85
Latinos Americans, 84, 86 gender and, 82
Lead exposure, 28, 29 history of use of, 97–98
Learned helplessness, 69 improving chances of
Learning and processing effectiveness of, 110–111
disorders, 55–56, 59 monitoring treatment with,
Learning Curve, 155 108–110
Life coaching, 156–157 most common in use, 96–97
Light, sleep patterns and, 41 non-stimulant, 101–102
Limbic ADHD, 152 number of people taking, 95–96
Lobbyists, 17 in other countries, 116–117
overview of, 117–118
Magnesium, 140 pediatricians and, 43
Magnetic resonance imaging, reasons teens stop taking,
functional, 32 107–108
Males. See Gender side effects of, 99, 102–103
Manic-depressive illness, 55 statistics on, xvi–xvii
Marijuana, 153–154 substance abuse risk and,
Marshmallow test, 8 111–112
Massage, 157 Meditation, 158–159
Math disorder, 55–56 Memory, 6, 101, 155
Matthews, Sheila, 169 Mentors, 144–145
MBD. See Minimal brain Mercury exposure, 29, 138
dysfunction Metadate, 96
McNeil Pediatrics, 167 Methylphenidate, 16–17, 96, 98, 99.
Meany, Michael, 34 See also Ritalin
Medicaid, 17, 85, 87 Military service, 75
Medical marijuana, 153–154 Mindfulness meditation, 158–159
MediCann, 153–154 Mindfulness Research Center, 158
Medications. See also Minerals, 140
Pharmaceutical companies; Minimal brain dysfunction
Stimulants; Supplements (MBD), 23, 97–98
abuse of in people without Mischel, Walter, 8
disorder, 113–116 Modafinil, 96–97, 103
advertising and, 18 Mood disorders, 55, 59
with behavior therapy, 130–131 Motivation, deficit of, 9
brain development and, Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 74–
103–104 75
188 Index

MTA. See Multimodal Treatment Obsessive-compulsive disorder

Study of Children (OCD), 54
with ADHD Occupational therapists, 159
Multimodal Treatment Study of ODD. See Oppositional defiant
Children with ADHD (MTA), disorder
99–100, 130–131 Off-label prescriptions, 96–97
Music classes, 157 Omega-3 fatty acids, 137–138
Onset, age of, 3, 16
N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), 139–140 Oppositional defiant disorder
Nagging, 36 (ODD), 59, 80
Name of ADHD, 11–12 Orfalea, Paul, 74
Narcolepsy, 57 Organizational skills, 10, 128–129
National Institute of Mental Organophosphate exposure, 28
Health (NIMH), 142 Orphanages, 33–34
National Survey of Children’s Outdoor play, 133–134
Health, 18, 79 Overdiagnosis
Naturalistic research, 112 causes of, 15, 19, 47, 166–167
Natural selection, 73 cultural implications of,
Neeleman, David, 74, 170 171–173
Neurofeedback, 140–143, 155–156, overview of, xix
160–161 Owens, Dee, 113–114
Neurons, 30, 98–99 Oz, Dr., 139
Neuroprotective effects, 104
Neuropsychological testing, 52–53 Parent-child interaction therapy
Neurotransmitters, 26, 30, 98, (PCIT), 123–125
99, 138 Parent management, 121–125
Newmark, Sanford, 140 Parents, 33–37, 68–69, 121–125
Nicotine exposure, 28 Parent-training programs,
NIMH. See National Institute of 121–125
Mental Health Parkinson’s disease, 30
No Child Left Behind Law, Pathology, 51
18, 87–88 PCIT. See Parent-child interaction
Norepinephrine (noradrenaline), therapy
30, 98, 101 Pediatricians, 43, 53–54
Novartis, 106 Performance pressure
Novelty seeking, 73 as cause for increase in
The Nurture Assumption diagnosis rate, 163, xvii–
(Harris), 33 xviii, xxi
Nurtured Heart Approach, 145 causes of ADHD and, 37–38
Nutrition, 135–137 in China and India, 89–90, 116
Nuvigil, 96 stimulant use in people
without ADHD and, 113–115
Obama, Barack, 88 Permissive parenting, 34
Obesity, 134 Pfiffner, Linda, 127
 Index 189

Pharmaceutical companies, 51, PTSD. See Post-traumatic stress

166–168 disorder
Pharmaceutical treatments. See
Medications Quinnell, Scott, 151
Phelps, Michael, 74, 170
Phobias, 54 Race, diagnosis and, 84–86
Phthalates, 28–29 Race to the Top, 88
“A Picture is Worth a Thousand Rappaport, Judith, 100
Dollars” (Farah), 152 RateMDs.com, 63
Plastics, 28–29 Ratey, John, 134
“Play Attention” systems, Ratey, Nancy, 156–157
155–156 Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 146
Pneumoencephalograms, 97 Report cards, daily, 125–126, 147
Policies, 18, 86–88, 168–170, Resilience, 76
173–175 Resting state brain activity, 32
Positive illusory bias, 73 Results of ADHD. See
Posner, Michael, 34–35 Consequences of ADHD
Postencephalitic behavior Reuptake, 99
disorder, 23 Ring of Fire ADHD, 152
Post-traumatic stress disorder Risk factors. See Causes of ADHD
(PTSD), 54 Risk-taking, 26, 35
Poverty, 84–86 Ritalin, 96, 98, 104–106, 116, 169.
Pregnancy, medications and, 103 See also Methylphenidate
Premature birth, 27, 29 Ritalin Wars, 104–106
Preschoolers, 164
Presentations of ADHD, 5. See also Saudi ADHD Society (AFTA), 116
Symptoms and presentation Saudi Arabia, 116
Preservatives, 135–136 Scans, 151–152
Pressure. See Performance Scheffler, Richard, 86, xxi
pressure Schemes. See Industrial complex
Prevalence. See also Diagnosis Schizophrenia, 153
autism and, 19–20 School funding policies, 18, 86–88
historical, 20–24 Schools. See also Education;
increasing rates of, 16–20, Performance pressure
85–86, xv academic support from,
overview of, 15–16 145–147
Provigil, 96 behavior therapy at, 125–129
Psychiatrists, 43–44 causes of ADHD and, 37–38
Psychologists, 43–44, 174 diagnosis and, 46–47
Psychopharmacologic need for changes in, 172
Calvinism, 105 policies and pressures of, xxiii
Psychosis, 153 reasons for increased
Psychotherapy. See Behavior symptoms at, 48–49
therapy Scientology, 105–106
190 Index

Scripts, 129 Socioeconomic status, 84–86

SCT. See Sluggish cognitive tempo Sodium benzoate, 136
Section 504 policies, 146 Spark: The Revolutionary New
Seizure disorders, 58 Science of Exercise and the
Selective attention, 8 Brain (Ratey), 134
Selective norepinephrine Spectrum disorder, ADHD
reuptake inhibitors as, 3–4
(SNRI), 101 SPECT scans, 151–152
Self-control, ADHD as lack SpongeBob SquarePants, 39
of, 8–10 SSI. See Supplemental
Self-destructive behavior, 83 Security Income
Self-employment, 75 Standardized testing, 86–87, 172
Self-esteem, 72–73 State policies, 18, 86–88, 168–170
“The Selling of Attention Deficit States, differing diagnosis rates
Disorder,” 167 among, 86–88
Sensory integration issues, Sterman, M. Barry, 142
159, 160 Stevens-Johnson syndrome, 97
Sensory processing disorder, 60–61 Stigma, 15, 84–85, xvi
Serotonin, 138 Still, George, 21–22
Sexual activity, 70 Stimulants. See also Medications
Sexually transmitted diseases, 70 abuse of, 113–115
Shaw, Philip, 31 anxiety disorders and, 55
Shire, 168 function of, 98–101
Single-photon emission most common in use, 96–97
computerized tomography number of people taking, 95
(SPECT) scans, 151–152 reason for success as
Skepticism. See Controversy treatment, 26
Skin conditions, 97 St. Johns wort, 157
Sleep apnea, 57 Strattera, 101
Sleep disorders, 41, 57, 102 Subsistence nations, 89
Sleepy-minded, 26, 100 Substance abuse, 58, 59–60,
Sluggish cognitive tempo 111–112, 168
(SCT), 62 Sugar, 137
SmartBrain Technologies, 155 Suicide, 83
Smart pills, 113–116 Super-parenting, 34
Smith, Matthew, 169 Superparenting for ADD
Smoking, 28, 60, 70 (Hallowell and Jensen), 122
SNRI. See Selective Supplemental Security Income
norepinephrine reuptake (SSI), 17, 85
inhibitors Supplements, 137–140, 157
Social life, consequences of Surveys, 18–19
ADHD to, 67–68 Sustained attention, 8
Social media, 38–41 Symptoms and presentation
Social skills groups, 127–128 adolescence and, 69–71
 Index 191

adulthood and, 71–72 overview of, 148

best context and, 75–76 Tyrosine, 139
in earliest years of life, 65–66
gender and, 80–81 Under-arousal, 26, 100
grade school and, 66–69 Underdiagnosis
overview of, 4–7, 77–78 gender and, 3, 79, 81–83, xvi
positive aspects of, 73–74 prevalence and, 15
resilience and, 77 stigma and, xix
self-esteem and, 72–73 Understanding Girls with AD/HD
typical characteristics of (Nadeau et al), 83
children vs., 10–11 Unique Logic and
Synapses, 30, 98–99 Technology, 155
United Kingdom Food Standards
Talking Back to Ritalin (Breggin), Agency, 136
105–106 Unproven treatments. See
Talk therapy, 130 Industrial complex
Tannock, Rosemary, 49 Untreated ADHD, costs of, xviii
Teenagers. See Adolescents
Teicher, Martin, 50 Victorian Age, 21
Television, 38–41 Video games, 38–41
Tenex, 101–102 Vigilance-promoting drugs, 96
Testing. See Diagnosis Violent media, 40–41
Thyroid imbalances, 57 Vitamins, 140
Time management skills, 10 Vive program, 144–145
Tolchinsky, Anatol, 40 Volkow, Nora, 9, 31
Tolerance, 109 Vyvanse, 96, 168
Tourette syndrome, 59
Transporters, 99 Water pollution, 172
Trauma, 56 Wellbutrin, 96
Treatments. See also Behavior Willpower, ADHD as lack of, 8–10
therapy; Family therapy; Women. See Gender
Industrial complex; Work, reasons for increased
Medications; Supplements symptoms at, 48–49
best forms of, 130–131 Working memory, 6, 101, 155
computer training programs,
154–156 Yelp, 63
diet and, 135–137
exercise, 133–134 Zinc, 140
family-focused, 143–145 “Zombie” misconception,
neurofeedback, 140–143 100–101, 105–106