Is Your Child on the TEAM?

Wednesday, April 18, 2012 1 Comment

TEAMS: A New ADHD Treatment for Preschoolers

Guestpost from David Rabiner, Ph.D.
Associate Research Professor; Dept. of Psychology & Neuroscience, Duke University
ATTENTION RESEARCH UPDATE – April 2012

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I have been a huge fan of Dr. David Rabiner’s ATTENTION RESEARCH UPDATE since its inception in 1997. Not only do I count on his comprehensive, plain-English explanations of up-to-date research trends and developments as key resources in my drive to keep my information base current,  I also archive them for future reference.  

For those who aren’t already among the over 40,000 people currently subscribed (sponsored now by CogMed, so no longer a charge to you), at the conclusion of this post I tell you how to get your own monthly copy in your very own email box.

I urge any professional working with individuals on the Attentional Spectrum — whether teachers, counselors, coaches, therapists or physicans — to sign yourself up the second you see those instructions, before it falls through the cracks.  (Parents and ADDers themselves can benefit too!)
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TEAM Training

In this month’s issue of Attention Research Update I review a recently published study that examined a new intervention for preschool children with ADHD called TEAMS – Training Executive, Attention, and Motor Skills.

The premise of this interesting and important study is that through regular parent-child engagement in games designed to exercise important neurocognitive skills, it may be possible to affect enduring reductions in core ADHD symptoms.

Thus, in contrast to current evidence-based interventions like medication treatment and behavior therapy, the goal of TEAMS is to produce more fundamental and enduring change.

I think this is very important work for the field and I believe you will find this to be an interesting study.

Sincerely,
David Rabiner, Ph.D.; Associate Research Professor
Dept. of Psychology & Neuroscience; Duke University; Durham, NC 27708

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mgh note: Although this post is longer than usual, I chose to present the entire April issue instead of writing a summary, in answer to the many requests I have received for more information about non-pharmaceutal treatment alternatives.

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Occupy ADD

Sunday, November 20, 2011 3 Comments

Is Your ADD-Doc GREAT?

We wanna’ know about competent ADD professionals.

How come?  Sadly (shamefully!), we see mounting evidence of a retreat to the ADD Dark Ages, and we need to jerk a knot in its tail and cut off its ugly head!

I have been disheartened, often appalled, by the accounts of patient/doctor and patient/therapist interactions that have been showing up recently on the ADD sites — in increasing numbers!

To say it plainly:

  • If the extent of ignorance we who are looking for help are finding among doctors and therapists who CLAIM to be ADD-specialists existed in any other field, we’d see malpractice suits and lost licenses!
  • There seem to be few AMA “watch dogs” with eyes on what the ADD doctors are doing.
  • Uninformed, non-medically trained government regulators seem to be more concerned with preventing drug abuse than safeguarding access to pharmaceutical interventions for those whose lives are derailed by legitimate, diagnostic disorders, made manageable through consistent access to medication.  Medication shortages are unconscionable.
THIS is not OK with me — and I hope it’s not OK with you, either.

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Top Ten Stupid Comments from ADD-Docs

Saturday, November 19, 2011 19 Comments

The Top Ten Stupid Comments
from [supposed]  ADD Professionals

Ten Unfortunate [and recent]  Examples of Ignorance masquerading as Information – and
uninformed personal opinion presented as medical FACT.

First Things First:
Let’s not lump the good ADD doctors and the ones who made these stupid comments together!

They are not the same species AT ALL!

There ARE Many Good ADD-Practitioners:

  • Those who keep up with the latest information, are aware of the studies shortly after they are published, read the journals, participate in practitioner-support lists, and more (and, by the way, most don’t receive a penny for the time it takes for them to stay current!)
  • The ones who attend CH.A.D.D. meetings or ADD conferences to meet more of the population they serve (to hear first-hand anecdotal report of the ADD experience) – again, not activities that help them feed their families or pay their bills
  • Doctors and therapists who host or speak at local support group meetings - mostly pro-bono
  • Many who listen from belief, and perform crackerjack differential diagnoses
  • Others who write books or develop podcasts to educate ADDers and add to the ADD knowledge-base of all ADD Professionals - and BELIEVE me, nobody gets royalty rich from those books!**

Those good ADD Doctors would not only be as appalled as I by the comments below, they will most likely find it difficult to believe that ANY doctor would think, much less say, many of them.

Unfortunately, far too many of you out there in ADD-land know differently.

FAR too many of you have been unable to locate a doctor willing to diagnose or medicate what you are pretty darn sure is ADD – and you have heard one or more of these very comments out of their reluctant, misinformed or down-right IGNORANT mouths.

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Distinctions: Coaching vs.Therapy

Friday, November 4, 2011 3 Comments

Some of the DIFFERENCES between
 The THERAPIST and The COACH

Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, A.C.T., MCC, SCAC
Dr. Lee Smith, CTP, MCC  ©1994, ’95, ’02, ’11

Obviously, the well-being of the client is the context for this discussion, and determining what kind of assistance is appropriate is an important question.  Why?

Because most coaches are not trained therapists and most therapists are not trained coaches.  


•  For potential clients: the question is, Which do I choose and how do I decide?

•  For helping professionals: the issue becomes when, what, and to which professional to refer.

•  When ADD is part of the picture, the differences between an ADD Coach and any other kind of coach becomes important as well.

Let’s begin the process of differentiating therapy and coaching by focusing only on the items in common with allcoaches, without regard to specialties.

At the end of this article are some links that will help you understand some key differences that only well-trained ADD Coaches understand.  In a future article I will address the issue ADD Coaching differences more directly.

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ADD Meds Info for Moms – Part I

Sunday, September 11, 2011 2 Comments

Titration Trials –  ADD Med’s Info for Moms Series: Part I

A photo of a variety of pills on a surfaceBACKGROUND: The genesis of the information in this series was actually a reply to a thread on the ADDitude Magazine Website.

I’m reposting it here because their site stripped the paragraph formatting at post time, making it WAY too difficult to read.

Since I’m adding it here anyway, I expanded its focus, added new content, and “edited a bit” so that it would make sense to those of you who don’t ever click the link to ADDitude Magazine for context (there’s tons of OTHER great stuff over there for those of you who do).

This series is my response to a number of medication concerns and comments posted in a section supporting Moms of ADD kids. There were various medication concerns, each detailing symptoms and side-effects in their children, hoping to get some advice from the other Mom’s with ADD kids.

Read *ALL* ADD info with your Brain Engaged

Even though I am The ADD Poster Girl, known globally for my ADD expertise  –  working with ADD for a twenty-five years, and even though I:

  • Know, literally, hundreds and hundreds of ADDers, and 
  • Co-founded the ADD Coaching field, and
  • Developed and delivered the world’s first ADD-specific coach training curriculum, and
  • Have helped hundreds of ADDers turn their lives around

I am NOT a doctor or a scientist!! 

This article is NOT what is considered a “primary source.” Neither is most of the ADD information you will run across on the internet, most of what you will find in books, or anything in the popular press.

That doesn’t mean the info you find there is not valuable or accurate,
but it also doesn’t mean that it IS.  

This series has been written to provide Moms with information and context to help you evaluate the risks and the benefits of medication for your children. I want you to have access to the facts and figures and theories and underlying rationale to be able to come to a decision, rather than jumping one way or another in reaction to the fear-mongering, sound-biting and personal opinion pretending to be information for a while now.

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Differential Diagnosis – Part 2

Sunday, July 10, 2011 3 Comments

Archery target with arrow in center of bullseye

Differential Diagnosis - What is it?

– and why would I care?

To answer the first part of the question, click on “What is it” (above) and read the first part of this article.

Click the link at the end of THAT article to come back here to read why you really need to care.

The answer to the second part?

In a nutshell: as with everything else in life,
“The Name of the Game™ determines the rules!”

If you don’t have the correct diagnosis, there is NO WAY you will be addressing your problems in a manner that will be successful.

Pretend you are a former college marathon runner in his late 30′s.  Lately you’re having problems completing your morning run.  You can barely breathe after about ten minutes of what used to be an easy warm-up.

Obviously, you’d be headed for trouble if you were treated with asthma medication and the source of your shortness of breath turned out to be a problem with your heart.

Since you aren’t sure what’s going on, you’d want to feel confident that your doctor knows enough about “shortness of breath” conditions to make a referral to the correct specialist, even if your particular doctor specializes in sports medicine, right?

When you’re dealing with a differential diagnosis that has few quantifiable measures to identify it, it becomes all the more important to work with a doctor who has the depth of knowledge it may take to distinguish between a daunting number of possibilities with similar presentations — yet very different treatments.

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ABOUT Non-Medical Alternatives

Monday, July 4, 2011 Leave a comment

Alternative Treatment Approaches

Another delightful Martin illustration of a woman with a question mark on her tee shirt, holding a sheet of paper in each hand, each printed with a single word : FACT or OPINION.Before I begin adding content to the “Alternatives” category here at ADDandSoMuchMore.com, I want to take a moment to remind us ALL that, where treating ADD and Attentional Spectrum Disorders is concerned,
it is ESSENTIAL to keep your brain engaged!

KEEP IN MIND that any “alternative” substance or treatment that positions itself as “an alternative to those dangerous pharmaceuticals“ is trying to scare you into a reaction, rather than give you comprehensive information designed to offer you a CHOICE.

Whenever you encounter an approach designed to manipulate rather than encourage, take a step BACK and look around some more to see if you can find similar information from a more even-handed source.  If fear-mongering is ALL you can find, it’s probably a good idea to cross that particular “alternative” off your list and move on.

It is also MORE than a good idea to have a good sense of the particular “flavor” of ADD you are attempting to treat: looking at cognitive and functional challenges, of course, but also the personal “demographics” you need to consider when looking at ADD treatment options. Where are you located in the “life is a real struggle” continuum?

Make sure you pair your situation and your treatment approach appropriately.

For example:

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Zebras, hoof-beats and Dr. House: Differential Diagnosis

Tuesday, June 28, 2011 11 Comments

Differential Diagnosis: WHAT is it, and WHY do I care?
(To find out how the Zebras relate, read the article!!) 

Fairly realistic drawing of two zebras

A differential diagnosis is one which examines all of the possible reasons for a set of symptoms in order to arrive at an identification of the cause (or combination of causes) of a presenting problem.

It’s a fairly simple process of elimination that can become unblievably complex in an eye-blink, “simply” because so many diseases and disorders present with similar symptoms,

Although the term “differential diagnosis” initially referred to issues of physical health, today many doctors in the mental health field also use this system of diagnosis.

Diagnosticians specialize in differential diagnosis.

Everybody’s favorite Diagnostician 

And who would that be?
Why, House, of course!

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TYPES of Attentional Deficits

Tuesday, June 21, 2011 Leave a comment

Drawing of a brown-skinned man in a hat, walking through a shallow body of water, cat-tails growing in the background. He is about to be surprised by a crocodile because 100% of his attention is on a book in front of his face: Safety Tips.Attentional Deficits: Three Biggies

While ALL attentional deficits are, strictly speaking, neurological events – meaning that they are marked by changes in the pattern of brain waves and the location of area doing the work – it is useful to think about them in three separate categories:

  1. Physical
  2. Neurological
  3. Situational

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Top Ten Questions about ADD meds

Wednesday, June 1, 2011 Leave a comment

– Updated legacy post -orig. 09/12/99- from Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, A.C.T., MCC, SCAC –

Considering ADD Medication?

line drawing of a middle-aged doctor with glasses: shoulders and headTen Important Things to find out from your doctor or your pharmacist

First Things First: Doctors are only human — OVERWORKED humans.  They also have a lot of patient information to keep track of.  On top of that, it may take a change or three to titrate meds for each patient (find the right medication, the right dosage, the right timing, etc.).

So it’s always wise to double-check your prescription EVERY time.   Make sure the medication, dosage and timing are the same as last time, and point out anything that’s different before you leave the office.  

When you pick up your medication at your pharmacy, check it again.

So that means you’re gonna’ write down the information the FIRST time, right?
THEN you’re gonna’ transfer it to something you will keep in your wallet – or to your PDA or cellphone – something you always have with you, right?
(while you’re waiting for your very first prescription to be filled is an excellent time to do this, by the way!)

NOW, on to those Ten Things . . .
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10 Questions to Ask to find a GRRRRreat! ADD Doc

Friday, March 25, 2011 4 Comments

ADD* & Looking for a Doctor?

Ten great questions to ask in the initial interview

Cartoon of a Doctor in a white lab coat with clipboard, glasses. and doctor's bag

Most of us are desperate for help by the time we look for it. 

ADD affect combined with a shortage of time and money means we often approach the process as beggars at a banquet, accepting a crust of bread as eagerly as a balanced meal.

If you don’t want to have to “Return to GO” when you find out later that things aren’t working (leaving your $200 on the table with the first doctor!), take some time to think first about what you need, and to find out whether your needs will be met by the care provider you are considering.

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SEE: ADD: What’s in a Name? for why I don’t use the “H” – even though you ADHD-ers are definitely included in the articles you will find here.

© Updated 2011, Madelyn Griffith-Haynie,CTP, CMC, MCC, SCAC-orig. on ADDCoach.com – 07/05/95

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