Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Treatment and medication
Better usually means smaller, rarer, or shorter. Pick something you can count, like losing your keys twice a week instead of every day.
Vague goals cannot be reviewed, so a few months later nobody can say whether anything changed and you are left going on mood alone. Choose two or three things that actually cost you something, and note how bad they get, how often, and how long they last. Then when you sit down to review, you have numbers instead of an argument, and partial improvement shows up as what it is rather than as failure.
This explains how treatments work. Never start, stop or change a medication because of something you read here.
Qur’an and Sunnah
God has set a due measure for everything (Quran 65:3). Giving your own difficulties a measure makes them easier to see clearly and easier to review honestly.
وَيَرۡزُقۡهُ مِنۡ حَيۡثُ لَا يَحۡتَسِبُۚ وَمَن يَتَوَكَّلۡ عَلَى ٱللَّهِ فَهُوَ حَسۡبُهُۥٓۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ بَٰلِغُ أَمۡرِهِۦۚ قَدۡ جَعَلَ ٱللَّهُ لِكُلِّ شَيۡءࣲ قَدۡرࣰ ا
and will provide for them from an unexpected source; God will be enough for those who put their trust in Him. God achieves His purpose; God has set a due measure for everything
Qur’an 65:3read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a trial of 410 adults randomised to six months of atomoxetine or placebo, the main outcome was work productivity rather than a symptom count. That choice reflects a real point: what treatment is for is the life around the symptoms, and that is measurable too. Your own countable markers are doing the same job on a smaller scale, without the trial's controls.
Adler LA, Spencer TJ, Levine LR, Ramsey JL, Tamura R, Kelsey D, Ball SG, Allen AJ, Biederman J. (2008). Functional outcomes in the treatment of adults with ADHD.. Journal of attention disorders doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Something you can count will show you a partial gain that a general impression would miss entirely.
When not to
Counting can tip into scrutinising yourself all day, so keep it to two or three markers and a quick note.
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
The point of treatment is not a tidier score on a questionnaire. It is fewer accidents, a finished course, work that holds, relationships that survive, a longer and better life.
When a child with ADHD and a parent get stuck in daily rows, the rows themselves start doing damage. Getting the ADHD properly managed early takes some heat out of those exchanges before defiance settles in as a habit.
Showing a teenager live pictures of activity in one targeted part of their own brain has been tried once, in a small trial, and it looked encouraging. That was around a dozen young people, and nobody has repeated it yet.