A March 2009 article by Shankar Vedantam of the Washington Post reports in its opening paragraph:

"New data from a large federal study have reignited a debate over the effectiveness of long-term drug treatment of children with hyperactivity or attention-deficit disorder, and have drawn accusations that some members of the research team have sought to play down evidence that medications do little good beyond 24 months."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/26/AR2009032604018.html

There are some truly remarkable aspects of this report.  First, the study being analyzed, the government-sponsored Multimodal Treatment Study of Children With ADHD (MTA) had originally been publicized in 1999 as showing support for the conventional pharmacological treatment approach to ADHD.  Then, in 2007, followup data showed no long-term benefits for those who had taken the medications, while indicating that there had been some statisticallly significant physical growth suppression apparent in the group of medicated children in the study.  Apparently, the growth of children wasn't the only thing suppressed, as the report of this new evidence was not widely disseminated and was actually reported in European media many months before getting noticed in the American press.  For example, The UK BBC reported on the new findings in 2007.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/7079233.stm

Another tidbit that wasn't reported was an apparently higher level of delinquent behavior in medicated children as compared to non-medicated children.  Substance abuse was not found to be higher in the medicated children, but that measure focused on illicit recreational substances rather than legally prescribed ones - so if these youth were experiencing a legally supported medication habit in which they get their drugs for free through doctors or health care plans it wouldn't be recognized in the study as substance abuse.  So if medication treatment appears to lower substance abuse in ADHD populations as some studies have suggested, it may merely be a case of giving these individuals a medically supported substance dependency that reduces their need or desire to resort to recreational drug habits.  That's nothing for researchers or doctors to brag about.

Another key fact about this NIMH MTA Study is that it was only comparing medication treatment to behavioral therapies, which are themselves superficial approaches to addressing ADHD or other childhood mental health diagnoses.  There was no comparison to nutritional therapies, diet, herbal remedies, exercise, stress management, family therapy, neurofeedback, or other treatments that are likely to address causal factors related to ADD/ADHD.  Even with that design which sought to create the appearance of medications being the ideal way of "treating" ADD/ADHD, the follow-up evidence shows that approach to be an utter failure.  Typically, research of psychiatric medications avoids doing any long-term outcome analysis, because those analyses have pretty consistently shown medications to generate more harm than benefit.  Journalist Robert Whitaker's Mad In America was an exceptional expose on the history of psychiatric profession delusions and mistreatments, which highlighted how treatments that show short term promise have so often been demonstrated to be a disaster over the long term.  We are fortunate that the evidence on the long-term effects from the MTA study has been published - sometimes studies are just kept quiet when the results are negative, but in this case the study was government sponsored and high profile, so all that could be done was to subdue the reporting of this data.

Those wishing to effectively address ADHD and ADD issues are encouraged to explore the resources and outline published at http://www.phinsights.com/adhd.html
There, you can learn about natural therapies and how using stress relief and stress reduction measures is a safe, effective approach to getting lasting resolution of ADHD difficulties.  Nutritional approaches also help individuals handle stress and maintain neurological equilibrium.  Equilibrium comes from within, not from drugs that momentarily override the state that a person is in.

Medical claims that ADHD or other psychiatric issues are "caused" by chemical imbalances in the brain that are best treated with medications are fundamentally misleading and deceptive.  Doctors have no way of establishing a cause-effect relationship between the brain state and mental or behavioral patterns.  One can generate the other, so the causality can appear in either direction.  Moreover, there are MANY causal factors that can lead to any given brain/neurological state.  Diet, drugs, digestion, TV viewing, video game playing, family stressors, school stressors, fears, environmental chemicals, sleep deprivation, and other factors can be significant contributors to the state of "chemical imbalance."  Yet, rather than investigating and addressing those issues in a way that fosters healthy lifestyle and empowerment for the patient, most physicians merely prescribe a drug to suppress or mask what is happening with the person.  Since the core issues are never resolved the patient continues to appear to "need" the medication.

There is real help available for those addressing challenges with ADHD - whether or not one has received that diagnosis, as the diagnosis has so often led to ineffective and hazardous treatments rather than true healing that many people choose to avoid seeing a doctor or getting an assessment.

Jed Shlackman, LMHC is a licensed mental health counselor practicing in Miami, FL.

Jed can be contacted at (305) 259-0013 or jshlackm@phinsights.com

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