Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Treatment and medication
Being told ADHD is largely inherited can sound like being told nothing can be done. It does not follow, and the two questions are separate ones.
How much of something a person shows, day to day, moves a good deal with what is around them, even when the underlying trait is strongly heritable. The same child in a different room, with a different set of demands and a different adult, performs differently. None of that removes the condition or rewrites the biology. It changes how much of it lands on a given Tuesday, which is the part anyone can actually work on.
This explains how treatments work. Never start, stop or change a medication because of something you read here.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Do not despair of God's mercy (Quran 12:87). Spoken to a father who had every reason to think the situation was closed, which is the mood a genetic explanation can leave a parent in.
يَٰبَنِيَّ ٱذۡهَبُواْ فَتَحَسَّسُواْ مِن يُوسُفَ وَأَخِيهِ وَلَا تَاْيۡـَٔسُواْ مِن رَّوۡحِ ٱللَّهِۖ إِنَّهُۥ لَا يَاْيۡـَٔسُ مِن رَّوۡحِ ٱللَّهِ إِلَّا ٱلۡقَوۡمُ ٱلۡكَٰفِرُونَ
My sons, go and seek news of Joseph and his brother and do not despair of God’s mercy- only disbelievers despair of God’s mercy.’
Qur’an 12:87read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
The first randomised controlled trial of real time fMRI neurofeedback in adolescents with ADHD trained activity in the right inferior prefrontal cortex, on the view that brain function in this condition is not simply fixed. Whatever that particular treatment turns out to be worth, and a first trial settles very little, the premise is reasonable. Do not read it as evidence that this technique works, only that a biological account does not mean a static one.
Alegria AA, Wulff M, Brinson H, Barker GJ, Norman LJ, Brandeis D, Stahl D, David AS, Taylor E, Giampietro V, Rubia K. (2017). Real-time fMRI neurofeedback in adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.. Human brain mapping doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Genes shape the trait, and what surrounds a person shapes how much of it shows up in a given day.
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
Everything has side effects, including doing nothing. The only real question is whether what you gain outweighs what it costs you.
The therapy that helps adult ADHD is not really about arguing with your thoughts. It is practical work on how your week is built, and it works because you are the one who can go and rebuild it.
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.