If you or your kid have ADHD, do have a treatment monitoring plan in place for the New Year?

When a child is diagnosed with ADHD, parents confront the difficult decision about which treatment(s) to pursue to best help their child succeed. While deciding on an initial treatment plan is important, equally important is establishing a plan to monitor how well that treatment is working on a sustained basis, regardless of what specific treatment(s) is being used. This is because children’s response to ADHD treatment often changes over time and a strong initial treatment response – be that medication treatment, behavior therapy, dietary treatment, etc., — provides no assurance that important treatment benefits will persist.   Core ADHD symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity that are well-controlled at one time may subsequently reemerge and create difficulties. A child’s success with school work, meeting behavioral expectations at school, and getting along with peers can also ebb and flow. For this reason, ADHD treatment guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry highlight the necessity of sustained, systematic treatment monitoring so that adjustments to treatment can be made as needed. Having a strong monitoring plan in place is thus an integral component of high quality ADHD treatment. Monitoring is often absent Despite the importance of sustained and systematic treatment monitoring, it is rarely done. In fact, data from one recent study with community...
Source: SharpBrains - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tags: Attention and ADD/ADHD hyperactivity impulsivity monitoring Source Type: blogs