Questions about Adult ADHD

Now that you’ve learned the basics of pursuing an evaluation for ADHD (in this post below), are you still wondering if it’s the right thing for you to do?  Here’s a wise idea: Take a screening test — a set of preliminary questions that can say that yep, you’re a worthy candidate for a full professional evaluation.

Here is one of the best interactive guides I’ve seen, featuring well-known Canadian ADHD expert Umesh Jain MD, PhD, MEd., Just click on the image above, and you’ll be taken  to  The Virtual Doctor Interactive Test at the website for TotallyADD.  Once you’ve finished the quiz, definitely take a look around the site. You don’t even need to have ADHD to appreciate the high-quality videos created by the team in charge, including two professional entertainers who are….TotallyADD. Read the rest of this entry »

“….And you want it because it releases dopamine,” explains the short video below.

“Things are important and valuable only if they activate your dopamine…..

“Being unfocused and easily distracted means you’re low on dopamine.”

Bottom line: If you don’t have “enough” dopamine, or your dopamine is activated only by over-the-top pleasures (or anticipation of pleasures)? Caution ahead.

It’s hard to overstate it: Please be a smart mental healthcare consumer when it comes to ADHD medical treatment.

That means not simply assuming that your prescribing physician, no matter how much ADHD expertise is professed, truly knows what’s what.  Learn the basics so you can “Trust but Verify.”

Ted Mandelkorn, MD

For all the information flooding the Internet  now about Adult ADHD, it’s still hard to find a solid overview of the medications used to treat it. So, I contacted Ted Mandelkorn, M.D. (pictured right).  Had he updated the excellent handout from a lecture I’d attended years ago? Indeed he had. Even better: He gave me permission to share it with ADHD Roller Coaster readers.  The first installment is below. Part II will follow shortly.

An “early adapter” of ADHD expertise and treatment, Dr. Mandelkorn is the parent of a child with ADHD and has ADHD himself. He trained in pediatrics and adolescent medicine, and he was a mental health fellow under Dr. Michael Rothenberg at the University of Washington. He has been in practice for 35 years, since 2001 at his clinic, Puget Sound Behavioral Medicine.

A PHYSICIAN’S PERSPECTIVE

Theodore Mandelkorn, MD

2010

PART ONE

• INTRODUCTION
• WHO SHOULD TAKE MEDICATIONS, AND WHY?
• WHAT IMPROVEMENT SHOULD BE SEEN?
• WHO SHOULD PRESCRIBE MEDICATIONS?
• MEDICAL TRIALS
• WHAT IS THE CORRECT MEDICATION?
• WHAT IS THE CORRECT DOSAGE?
• WHAT ABOUT “NATURAL” THERAPIES?
• SUMMARY

Read the rest of this entry »

I knew something was up when a greater-than-usual  number of “help, please!” e-mails appeared in my in-box this morning.

Then my friend Doreen gave me the heads up on Facebook: MSN.com had featured a “When Your Lover Has ADHD” tag on its Valentine’s-themed homepage.  It linked to an interview I’d done last year with Health.com: “When Someone You Love Has ADHD: Frequently Asked Questions About Helping Your Partner and Yourself.”  It begins this way:

When journalist Gina Pera married a man with undiagnosed Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) she embarked on a wild ride that took her from frustration and confusion to understanding and advocacy. Today she runs support groups for people with ADHD and their partners, and her book Is It You, Me, or Adult A.D.D.? was published in 2008.

“Wild ride” indeed. But our marriage started out more on the rainy side. (That’s us at our outdoor wedding in 1998.  Despite the huge two-person umbrella, my husband still managed to position the dripline right over me. Fortunately, that kind of center-of-the-universe tendency is a relic of the past — or neither one of us, not to mention our marriage, would have survived!) Here’s a sample of the questions:

Q: How did you realize that your husband had ADHD?

Q: In the title of your book, you used the outdated term “ADD.” Why that instead of ADHD? Read the rest of this entry »

To save money, many people with ADHD take generic medications. Most have received assurances from  their physicians that “bioequivalence” with the brand-name version is required and assured. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. Increasingly, patients who do notice a significant difference between brand-name and generic are making their voices heard.

The ADHD Roller Coaster covered this topic a few months ago, after I read an outrageous Consumer Reports press release that  even warned consumers away from brand-name medications for ADHD as being too costly and unnecessary.  I countered with this blog post on the potential dangers of generic medications for treating ADHD and co-existing conditions.

With other readers, I left comments at the Consumer Reports blog post (“Parents: Don’t rush Children to Adderall, Concerta, Strattera”).

Today’s New York Times article (“Not All Drugs Are the Same After All”) today backs up my points on generics. Some snippets: Read the rest of this entry »

“I have a patient with 2 PhD’s and a Master’s Degree, about 55 years old [two degrees in physics, and the other in another field of science] – he simply can’t think when the variables become unpredictable and, in the context of time, too abundant to manage in a give time frame. He is wonderful in the context of mathematics, but simply can’t take the responsibility of working socially with the unpredictable variables present in management with a team.

“In math he can think, in the team he freezes.

“Do you know anyone that has been overlooked like this… just think for a moment.”

—

So writes Dr. Charles Parker this week in his excellently informative CorePsychblog (Brain & Body Connections: Core Science Findings for Everyday Psych Problems). Read the rest of this entry »