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Buzz Ellison had many problems in elementary school. He could not sit still, and was constantly jumping up and down in class, not paying attention to his teachers, not focusing on the task at hand. As a result, his mother Katherine Ellison says, he was always in trouble. "His attitude towards school really changed. I think he got bullied both by his peers and his teachers who insisted that he could do things that he really wasn't capable of doing at that age and remembering things and they gave him a lot of negative feedback," said Ellison.
Katherine Ellison, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, says she didn't understand why he behaved like that, and admits, her behavior was also contributing to the situation. "I was making things worse often by being anxious or being impatient or not understanding him. I realized at some point that I really hadn't hugged him in a while. I wasn't smiling when he came into the room because we were having such a hard time," recalled Ellison.
Buzz was diagnosed with ADHD when he was nine. And, like many parents of children with ADHD, Ellison learned she had the disorder as well. She was in her late 40s. "It was a great relief to actually get a diagnosis, because I had spent a lifetime really wondering what was going on and why I seem to be different from so many other people I knew," Ellison noted. "I, like many people with ADD, had a rollercoaster of a life. For instance, I got sued for $11 million for a reporting error that I made in one of my first years as a newspaper reporter. And two years later, I won a Pulitzer Prize. So these are the kinds of things that often happen when you got this disorder; you're capable of really amazing things and very humiliating, terrible things."
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Youre late to work (again), behind on a project, or cant remember the action points from the last meeting. If youre one of the roughly 10 million U.S. adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), it can be a constant challenge to stay on task.
Anthony Rostain, MD, professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, in Philadelphia, says you can get distracted by external stimuli like noise or internal stimuli like daydreaming; these different distractions require different coping strategies, he explains.
Heres how to pinpoint your weaknesses and 10 strategies for getting the job done.
More How to Pay Attention with Adult ADHD - adultadhd - Health.com
Drugs to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, don't appear to put kids at higher risk of heart problems or death, scientists said Monday. Scattered reports of sudden deaths among children on the medications have caused concern among parents and doctors in recent years, and several of the drugs now carry warnings about heart complications and behavioral side effects. While the new study has limitations, researchers called the findings reassuring.
"The risk of death is certainly no higher in children who take ADHD medications than in children who don't," said Sean Hennessy, a pharmacist at Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania, who led the work. Some 2.7 million children and teens in the U.S. use the drugs, which are stimulants that can raise blood pressure and heart rate. The drugs include Novartis' Ritalin and Shire's Adderall. The new study, funded by Shire, is based on claims data from Medicaid and a commercial insurer. It includes more than 240,000 kids ages three to 17, who received ADHD drugs and were followed for 135 days on average.
The researchers then sought to compare those children to more than 965,000, who didn't take the drugs but were of similar age and gender and came from the same states as the users. That was easier said than done, the researchers discovered, because often the claims data didn't match the hospital records. Based on the data they could validate, Hennessy and his colleagues calculated that there would be six sudden deaths or cardiac arrests per 1,000,000 kids taking ADHD drugs for a year.
That's slightly more than the four per 1,000,000 kids in the comparison group. But because the numbers are so small, the difference could easily have been due to chance. There were no strokes or heart attacks in the ADHD group, and the researchers estimate it's very unlikely that the true rates would exceed 24 cases per 1,000,000 per year. Rates of death "from any cause," which were the most reliable numbers in the insurance data, were 179 per 1,000,000 kids per year in the ADHD group and 300 per 1,000,000 in the comparison group.
More ADHD drugs don't increase death risk, study finds - Health - Heart health - msnbc.com
The research doesn't definitively prove that tobacco smoke can harm children's brains, and it doesn't say how much smoke is too much. However, it does add to the evidence that children may be especially vulnerable to the effects of smoke exposure. "They're in a developmental stage and their body is growing," potentially putting them at greater risk of disruptions to their brains than adults, said study co-author Hillel R. Alpert, a research scientist at Harvard School of Public Health's Center for Global Tobacco Control in Boston. It's difficult to confirm whether secondhand smoke causes children's health problems because it would be unethical to expose kids to smoke and watch what happens to them. Instead, researchers often must look backward, as they did in this study, and try to eliminate all explanations but one for a link between smoke exposure and illness.
For their study, published online July 11 in the journal Pediatrics, researchers examined the results of a 2007 U.S. telephone survey of families that included 55,358 children under the age of 12. Six percent of them were exposed to secondhand smoke in the home. After adjusting their numbers to improve their validity from a statistical point of view, the researchers found that about 8 percent of the kids had learning disabilities, 6 percent had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and almost 4 percent had behavioral and conduct disorders, such as oppositional defiant disorder. Those who lived in homes with smokers were more likely to have at least two of the conditions, even after the researchers adjusted their statistics to account for such factors as income and education levels of parents.
The researchers estimated that secondhand smoke may be responsible for 274,100 extra cases of the three types of disorders examined. Older children, particularly those between 9 and 11 years old, boys and poor children were most at risk of developing the disorders as a result of smoke exposure, the researchers found. Children with smoke exposure at home were also more likely to receive behavioral counseling or treatment, which greatly increases health care costs, the survey found. "Parents should consider banning smoking from their homes," Alpert said.
No only are children vulnerable because of their physiology, "they're also vulnerable because they do not necessarily have the choice about being exposed to smoke or not," he added. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, secondhand smoke has been linked to increased severity of asthma in 200,000 to 1 million children and 150,000-300,000 lower respiratory tract infections in babies. Secondhand smoke is also linked to increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome. Based on the survey results, the researchers concluded that about 4.8 million U.S. children under the age of 12 live in homes with a smoker, which is slightly less than previous estimates.
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November 22, 2013 - Two million more children in the United States have been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and one million more U.S. children were taking medication for ADHD over an 8 year period (2003-2004 to 2011-2012), according to a new study [1.81 MB] led by CDC. According to CDC scientists, children are commonly being diagnosed at a young age. Half of children diagnosed with ADHD are diagnosed by 6 years of age. Children with more severe ADHD tend to be diagnosed earlier, about half of them by the age of 4, based on reports by parents.
ADHD is one of the most common chronic conditions of childhood. It often persists into adulthood. Children with ADHD may have trouble paying attention and/or controlling impulsive behaviors. Effective treatments for ADHD include medication, mental health treatment, or a combination of the two. When children diagnosed with ADHD receive proper treatment, they have the best chance of thriving at home, doing well at school, and making and keeping friends.
*In 2011-2012, 11 percent of U.S. children 4-17 years of age had been diagnosed with ADHD and 6.1 percent of U.S. children 4-17 years of age were taking medication for ADHD. Of the children with current ADHD, 69 percent were taking medication for ADHD treatment.
*States vary widely in terms of the percentage of their child population diagnosed and treated with medication for ADHD. The percentage of children with a history of an ADHD diagnosis ranges from 15 percent in Arkansas and Kentucky to 4 percent in Nevada.
*Medication treatment for ADHD is most common among children reported by their parents as having more severe ADHD.
*Nearly one in five high school boys and one in 11 high school girls in the United States were reported by their parents as having been diagnosed with ADHD by a healthcare provider.
Note to parents: If you have concerns about your childs behavior, complete the ADHD checklist, visit CDC's ADHD website and discuss your concerns with your childs healthcare provider.
CDC Report Finds Children With ADHD Estimates Rising
However, child psychiatrists warn against that approach, saying that ADHD is a psychiatric disorder that has to be dealt with in accordance with each childs unique needs and personality. A delay in the development of the prefrontal cortex is often observed in children with ADHD, which is why it takes a longer time for these kids to learn to make plans, override their impulsive urges and handle things rationally, Taiwanese Society of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry director-general Chang Hsueh-tsen said.
Chang said that the condition could render them susceptible to unfair and improper treatment from their peers, depending on the severity of their symptoms. Young patients with mild ADHD symptoms are generally more accepted by society and may only require behavioral therapies. On the other hand, those whose symptoms are more visible often require both behavioral and medical treatments to make their conduct more socially acceptable, Chang said. Chang divides the parents of ADHD children into four types: the hermit crab, who is reluctant to accept their childrens diagnosis; the octopus, who is keen on exploring unorthodox methods to cure their children; the seahorse, who looks after their children around-the-clock; and the shark, who keeps a strict hand over their children.
The mother of a young man with ADHD, who requested anonymity, acknowledged that she used to be a shark parent. My son started exhibiting ADHD symptoms in kindergarten. Whenever I went to pick him up, I was cornered by other parents who accused my son of pushing or hitting their kids, she said. I was so mortified that I later decided to pick up my son after his classmates all left with their parents, she added.
She tried softer approaches to deal with her sons condition, such as teaching him meditation. To my astonishment, meditation did not calm my son, but rather made him more hyperactive. I had no choice but to take a more rigorous approach, which included me hitting my son 100 times each time he used foul language, the mother said. Even to this day, my son, who is now a senior-high school student, still complains to me about my parenting style, she said.
Doctors warn on ADHD treatment - Taipei Times
Kids with ADHD may benefit from a morning exercise routine prior to school. According to a new study, daily before-school aerobic activities helped calm attention deficit problems in at-risk schoolchildren both in the classroom and at home. "Early studies suggest that physical activity can have a positive effect on children who suffer from ADHD," said researcher Alan Smith, chairperson of Michigan State University's Department of Kinesiology.
Along with Betsy Hoza, lead author of the new study and a psychologist at the University of Vermont, Smith observed more than 200 elementary school students in kindergarten, first grade and second grade. Over a 12-week period, students were randomly selected to participate in moderate to vigorous physical activity each day before school; a control group was tasked with more sedentary, indoor activities.
Basketball legend Shaquille O'Neal exercises with students from Orr Elementary School in Washington, D.C.
Hoza and Smith found that all children, regardless of ADHD tendencies, benefited from before-school exercise. But children previously diagnosed with ADHD or exhibiting ADHD symptoms benefited the most from morning aerobics. "Although our findings indicated that all participants showed improvements, children with ADHD risk receiving exercise benefited across a broader range of outcomes than those receiving the sedentary activities," Smith said.
Smith says more research is needed to hone in on exactly how much and how often is necessary for the exercise to achieve the most effective results. The study was published this week in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology.
Exercise before school helps mitigate attention problems - UPI.com
Despite continued warnings that the overuse of antibiotics is enabling so-called superbugs -- infectious diseases resistant to drugs -- physicians continue to prescribe children and teenagers antibiotics about twice as often as necessary. That according to a new study by researchers with the CDC and the Seattle Children's Hospital.
According to the new study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, roughly two-thirds of all flu- or cold-like symptoms -- whether a bad cough, an earache, or a sore throat -- are caused by viral infections. Viral infections won't respond to antibiotics. Yet antibiotics are prescribed some 57 percent of the time. That means at least 11 million antibiotic prescriptions are given to children unnecessarily.
Co-trimoxazole, a type of antibiotic.
Researchers say that's a serious problem. The more antibiotics that are put out into the world, the more opportunities harmful bacteria has to develop defenses to these drugs. "During the last 70 years, bacteria have shown the ability to become resistant to every antibiotic that has been developed," Dr. Steve Solomon, director of the CDC's Office of Antimicrobial Resistance, recently told Medical News Today. "And the more antibiotics are used, the more quickly bacteria develop resistance. The use of antibiotics at any time in any setting puts biological pressure on bacteria that promotes the development of resistance."
According to the CDC, antibiotic-resistant infections sicken some two million Americans and kill 23,000 every year. Researchers say doctors need to be more precise in their prescriptions and exercise patience and caution when considering the necessity of antibiotic prescriptions. The study offered some figures on which types of infections are more likely to be bacterial than viral, information that could help doctors make more informed decisions on when and when not to prescribe antibiotics.
Children overprescribed antibiotics - UPI.com
The study, the largest review of ADHD patients' brain scans ever conducted, might also provide clues for developing new treatments. "If you know what region of the brain is involved in ADHD, you could possibly target that part with medication," said Martine Hoogman of Radboud University in the Netherlands, the study's lead author. ADHD causes inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity, although a given person may not show all those traits. Hoogman and colleagues analyzed MRI scans for more than 3,200 people in nine countries aged 4 to 63, of whom 1,713 had ADHD. They found that the brains of children with the condition were slightly smaller in five regions, including those that control emotions, voluntary movement and understanding.
An 8-year-old boy concentrates on a computer screen as he uses a special helmet — an ADHD intervention device — with an instructor's help at a learning center in Greensboro, N.C.
The scientists reviewed one scan per person and found no effect from ADHD medications. Hoogman said the findings support previous theories that the brains of people with ADHD may develop more slowly but that those differences are mostly wiped out by the time children grow up. "By the time they become adults, the differences in their brains are not significant anymore," she said. The study was paid for by the National Institutes of Health and was published online Wednesday in the journal Lancet Psychiatry.
What do differences mean?
Other experts described the findings as interesting but said there wasn't enough information to link the brain differences to behavioral problems seen in people with ADHD. "The study confirms that there are structural differences in the brains of people with ADHD, but it doesn't tell us what they mean," said Graham Murray, a lecturer in psychiatry at Cambridge University, who was not part of the research. "Having less brain in several regions sounds bad, but it's not as simple as that," he said, pointing out that decreased brain matter can sometimes be beneficial — like in teenagers, when the outer cortex of their developing brains becomes thinner as their intellectual capacity grows. "The brain is very good at adapting," Murray said. "Just because you have less brain volume doesn't condemn the child to not being able to function well."
Jonathan Posner, an associate professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, also said the research should help families with children diagnosed with ADHD. "To have a solid understanding that ADHD really does originate from brain systems and that it causes alterations in the way the brain is structured and functions is important information for reducing stigma," said Posner, who co-authored an accompanying commentary. "It will hopefully create more empathy for children who have ADHD."
Some Brain Areas in Kids With ADHD Undersized, Study Finds
