Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Treatment and medication
Decide at the start what you are actually aiming at. Eight difficulties down to six, then to four, then perhaps to two. Never zero, because zero was never on offer.
Everybody has some of these traits, and ADHD is largely inherited, so a life with none of it was never a realistic target for anyone. Naming a number at the start gives you something to review against later, and it protects you from the moment six months in when you decide it did not work because it did not fix everything. Six instead of eight is a different week. It is worth having.
This explains how treatments work. Never start, stop or change a medication because of something you read here.
Qur’an and Sunnah
So truly where there is hardship there is also ease (Quran 94:5). The ease comes alongside the hardship rather than in place of it, which is roughly the shape of a good treatment outcome.
فَإِنَّ مَعَ ٱلۡعُسۡرِ يُسۡرًا
So truly where there is hardship there is also ease
Qur’an 94:5read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic review of controlled and naturalistic studies found that stimulants, though recommended first and clearly effective in the short term, have much thinner evidence behind them when it comes to long term outcomes in adults. Even the best supported treatment here is discussed in terms of how much it reduces, and over what period. Setting your target as a reduction rather than a removal is not a lowering of hope, it is what the research is actually about.
Fredriksen M, Halmøy A, Faraone SV, Haavik J. (2013). Long-term efficacy and safety of treatment with stimulants and atomoxetine in adult ADHD: a review of controlled and naturalistic studies.. European neuropsychopharmacology : the journal of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A goal you can actually reach keeps you in a treatment long enough for it to help, where an impossible one talks you out of it.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Massage may well leave you calmer, and calmer is worth having. It is not a treatment for ADHD, and the two are worth keeping in separate boxes.
The trouble now is not that nothing works. It is that the things which work are spread unevenly, and whether a family gets any of them depends heavily on where they happen to live.
CBT has more research behind it than most other therapies, and part of that is because it is easy to count. Its steps and its outcomes can be scored, so it gets studied more often.