Perhaps it’s fitting that as New Year’s Eve approaches I am writing about ADHD and driving automobiles.
Driving is one of the tasks that many, but not all, adults with ADHD find difficult. Teenagers, especially boys with the hyperactive or combined forms of ADHD, are notoriously poor drivers.  Multiple speeding tickets and fender-benders (or worse) are [...]
It’s always a pleasure to suggest that there may be a new option in medications for ADHD.  So I have preliminary good news about a medication which has been used for some time in children with ADHD, called guanfacine (trade name Tenex).Â
This is a different kind of medicine (called a selective alpha-2A- adrenoceptor agonist)  than the [...]
I was reminded yesterday about this old medical precept: “First, do no harm.” It’s a reminder to me about the physician’s first task, to ensure that patients leave me in better shape than the way they arrived.
I was doing a consultation on a man who was concerned about the effectiveness of treatment by another physician. The [...]
When should you suspect that you have ADHD?Â
I’d suggest you think of that possibility whenever your performance in life doesn’t meet your expectations, or it doesn’t match with your capabilities. There are lots of reasons why that may be the case, of course, including lack of opportunity in life, chronic illness, or just plain laziness. However, [...]
Did you ever think that being disorganized was a good thing?  Most adults with ADHD complain that they can’t get organized, and that that problem drives them and those around them to distraction.
According to the New York Times yesterday (See “Saying Yes to Mess,” by Penelope Green at www.nytimes.com/2006/12/21) , being cluttered and messy is [...]
Adults with ADHD rarely present with ADHD alone. It’s common for them to have anxiety or mood disorders or both as well. That complicates treatment.
What do you treat first? “Treat what’s worst, first,” is the clinical motto (see the article, “Mood, Anxiety Disrders Complicate ADHD Treatment,”  at www.clinicalpsychiatrynews, Dec. 2006).  Many times that will be [...]
Naturally you’d worry about giving CNS stimulants to a person who has epilepsy.  Someone with seizures already has an overactive central nervous system.  Wouldn’t adding the stimulants precipitate seizures?
Apparently not, according to a new study from Children’s Hospital in Boston.  It shows that, at least in children with ADHD who took delayed release methylphenidate (Concerta), there [...]
Writing for the Los Angeles times yesterday, Melissa Healy detected a   trend among young adults long treated for ADHD to move away from medication as a treatment (see www.latimes.com, December 18, 2006). She describes a natural arc that young adults take away from using medications to treat the disorder.
She cites the natural wish for increased [...]
It can get dreary reading about the problems that adults with ADHD face. So it’s a pleasant change of pace to point out that many such adults thrive in spite of, or even because of, their ADHD.
David Neeleman, founder of JetBlue Airways, has been quoted as saying,  “If someone told me you could be normal [...]
You might expect that treating an adult with ADHD who also  has a substance abuse history would be complicated, and it is. It’s a common problem. Yet Timothy Wilens, MD, a noted Massachusetts General Hospital expert in ADHD, continues to assert that we may have more therapeutic options than we would expect.
In a recent article (see www.ajp.psychiatryonline.org for December [...]
