Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Treatment and medication
The warning about group social skills work is about loud, disruptive children. A quiet, anxious child who simply has not had much practice with other children is a different case, and a gentle group may be exactly right.
So the question is not whether groups work, but which child is sitting in front of you. If the difficulty really is inexperience, a group offers practice that cannot be had alone. If the difficulty is behaviour that other children copy and admire, the same room does harm. Same format, opposite effect, depending on the reason underneath.
This explains how treatments work. Never start, stop or change a medication because of something you read here.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Check it first, in case you wrong others unwittingly (Quran 49:6). A rule applied without looking at the particular child can shut out the one it would have helped.
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓاْ إِن جَآءَكُمۡ فَاسِقُۢ بِنَبَإࣲ فَتَبَيَّنُوٓاْ أَن تُصِيبُواْ قَوۡمَۢا بِجَهَٰلَةࣲ فَتُصۡبِحُواْ عَلَىٰ مَا فَعَلۡتُمۡ نَٰدِمِينَ
Believers, if a troublemaker brings you news, check it first, in case you wrong others unwittingly and later regret what you have done
Qur’an 49:6read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A double blind trial compared atomoxetine with placebo in children who had ADHD alongside anxiety, a combination affecting something like a quarter to a third of children with ADHD. It is a medication trial and says nothing at all about groups. What it does show is a field taking seriously that a child with ADHD and anxiety is a different clinical picture, which is the reasoning being asked for here.
Geller D, Donnelly C, Lopez F, Rubin R, Newcorn J, Sutton V, Bakken R, Paczkowski M, Kelsey D, Sumner C. (2007). Atomoxetine treatment for pediatric patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder with comorbid anxiety disorder.. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A format helps when it matches the actual reason a child is struggling.
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
What a person expects from a treatment genuinely changes what they get from it. That is not a trick to be exploited, and it is not nothing either.
ADHD is managed rather than cured, across a whole life. Anything advertising a cure is telling you it is not working from the evidence.
People who use several kinds of help tend to report more benefit than people relying on one. Medication, therapy, coaching, reading, sleep and movement all seem to add something rather than compete.