ADHD and Parenthood

There’s a cartoon floating around among my Facebook friends. One character says: “Come to bed, honey.” And the other character, at the computer keyboard, says, “I can’t. Someone is saying something wrong on the Internet, and I must correct it!”

For 10 years, I’ve resembled that character, rat-a-tat-tatting at my keyboard to counter fallacious information about ADHD on the Internet. The latest just this morning, which as both an ADHD advocate and responsible journalist, was too hard to resist.  (If you’d like to skip my preamble, scroll to the end of this post to get to a recent CNN article and my response to it.)

And yes, it’s been a  personal mission, though it hasn’t kept me up late at night and I aimed for surgical strikes, not omnipresence.   As a writer and editor with a long-held reputation for fairness and accuracy, though, I’ve found this new “medium” of the Internet by turns extremely exciting yet unsettling. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to a new department here at the ADHD Roller Coaster blog: ADHD in the News Monthly Roundup.   In this spot,  you”ll find  links and summaries to key ADHD-related news stories, starting now with the March 2010 headlines. (Please note: Some sources might require registration or a fee.)

Topics include: Vision therapy for ADHD, Adderall abuse on college campuses, sensory integration disorder, George Will’s opinion on the new DSM, requiring health insurance policies to cover mental health treatment, and  more.

As always, your comments welcome!

The Washington Post:

Parity law requires mental health benefits comparable to physical care benefits

Summary: An estimated 140 million Americans, most of them covered by employer-provided group insurance plans, are the beneficiaries of a new federal law designed to guarantee mental-health parity in insurance coverage.  In other words, the brain is finally being acknowledged as a physical body part!

Excerpt:

Denise Camp was resigned to the double standard that had long applied to her medical bills, forcing her to skimp on other expenses so she could pay for mental health treatment. While visits to her internist for physical problems required a $20 co-pay, her weekly therapy sessions with a social worker cost $50 and trips to the psychiatrist who prescribed her medication were $75. A similar disparity applied to medicines: Drugs to treat the crippling depression that ended her engineering career cost her twice what she paid for an antibiotic. Click here to read the rest of the story.

Science Daily:

Mouse Model Reveals a Cause of ADHD

Summary: To better understand the mechanisms of ADHD, particularly the dopamine pathway, scientists created genetically modified mice.

Excerpt:

Although it’s typically considered an adolescent curse, ADHD actually affects about five percent of adults as well. New research in a mouse model of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder suggests that the root of the psychiatric disorder might be the over-activity of a protein that regulates dopaminergic pathways. The work suggests a path toward new treatments for symptoms including inattentiveness, over-activity and impulsivity. Read the rest of this entry »

This week, I’m preparing a presentation for the CADDAC conference on ADHD in Toronto May 30-31. Here’s the description from the program:

“When The Acorn Falls Close to the Tree: Parenting when Both Parent and Child Have ADHD”

Your child has been diagnosed with ADHD, you’ve learned that this condition is highly genetic, and now you wonder: Could ADHD also be an issue for you and/or your partner? Even well into adulthood, ADHD can present challenges in staying organized, managing time (and mood), and maintaining the routines that stabilize and nourish a family. Learn how unrecognized ADHD symptoms in a parent can affect parenting skills and focus on strategies for success.

My desk is awash in copies of studies and articles on how ADHD in a parent affects the child. It doesn’t take a brain scientist to know that when a parent has difficult ADHD challenges in organization, initiation, motivation, and mood regulation, it doesn’t bode well for the child — especially if the child has ADHD and similar challenges. But here I am at my desk, trying to parse the studies in this area. Along with anecdotes and years of observations, it’s good to have data. Read the rest of this entry »