Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Treatment and medication
Play based programmes that build executive skills in young children have done reasonably well with children at risk of struggling at school. None has yet been tested in children actually diagnosed with ADHD, and that is a real difference rather than a technicality.
Results found in a broad at risk group tend to shrink, sometimes to nothing, when the same thing is tried with clinically diagnosed children, where the difficulties run deeper. A nursery running one of these is doing something sensible. A parent being told it is treatment for ADHD is being told more than anyone knows. Worth checking which claim is being made before you place your hopes on it.
This explains how treatments work. Never start, stop or change a medication because of something you read here.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Do not rush to recite before the revelation is fully complete but say, Lord, increase me in knowledge (Quran 20:114). Waiting for the evidence to finish arriving is its own kind of care.
فَتَعَٰلَى ٱللَّهُ ٱلۡمَلِكُ ٱلۡحَقُّۗ وَلَا تَعۡجَلۡ بِٱلۡقُرۡءَانِ مِن قَبۡلِ أَن يُقۡضَىٰٓ إِلَيۡكَ وَحۡيُهُۥۖ وَقُل رَّبِّ زِدۡنِي عِلۡمࣰ ا
exalted be God, the one who is truly in control. [Prophet], do not rush to recite before the revelation is fully complete but say, ‘Lord, increase me in knowledge!’
Qur’an 20:114read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta-analysis of randomised trials of cognitive training in ADHD found gains on some neuropsychological measures, but symptom effects that largely vanished once raters were blind to who had been trained. That is the pattern to expect whenever a training programme is asked to change life rather than test scores. It concerns cognitive training rather than preschool play curricula, so read it as a caution about how these findings usually go.
Cortese S, Ferrin M, Brandeis D, Buitelaar J, Daley D, Dittmann RW, Holtmann M, Santosh P, Stevenson J, Stringaris A, Zuddas A, Sonuga-Barke EJ, European ADHD Guidelines Group (EAGG). (2015). Cognitive training for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: meta-analysis of clinical and neuropsychological outcomes from randomized controlled trials.. 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 programme tested on a milder group has not yet been tested on a harder one.
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
There is no single treatment that covers all of this. What works looks more like five things running alongside each other, and understanding the condition comes first.
Coaching for adult ADHD comes down mostly to one thing: a standing appointment with somebody who will ask how it went. That sounds thin until you have tried keeping a plan alive entirely on your own.
If a treatment comes with a contract, take it to a solicitor before signing. Not because you cannot read it, but because that puts a few days between the pitch and your signature.