ADHD Drugs Don't Boost Kids' Grades, Studies Find • Hacker News Board

Re: ADHD Drugs Don't Boost Kids' Grades, Studies Find

#111

Post by therobot24 » Fri, Jul 12, 2013, 7:26 PM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #32

thejosh wrote: post #4

Yes it won't boost their grades, but it will actually make them be able to be "normal" people. People haven't lived with someone with actual/bad ADHD if they think drugs don't work.

"People haven't lived with someone with actual/bad ADHD if they think drugs don't work." Or they actually read books. All of the research shows that ADD drugs actually make ability to concentrate worse in the long term, and in the short term they increase the ability to concentrate but not the actual rate of learning. This study has zero new information, this is all stuff we've known for decades.

if you have a few good links i'd be interested in reading about the long term affects of Ritalin/Adderall/Concerta/etc. It's frankly hard to trust raw search engine results on such a biased topic.

Re: ADHD Drugs Don't Boost Kids' Grades, Studies Find

#112

Post by stevewillows » Fri, Jul 12, 2013, 8:24 PM UTC

stevewillows wrote: post #82

doktrin wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This isn't an ad for mirtazipine. :) Genuinely curious - do you in fact take mirtazipine to manage AD(H)D? I've never had it recommended as a treatment option.

It's mainly for the depression - - but I've found since starting the medication that I've been able to focus far better than before. There are some studies around where they tested this drug for ADHD with kids. I've tried a few other drugs for both ADHD and depression / anxiety over the years, but this one seems to be the sweet spot between helping with everything. Hardly scientific, but it's my experience. I should…

To add to this; If any of you with ADHD have found that you're miraculously killing at Scrabble or Boggle after a few drinks, being on this medication is a similar feeling. It's as if the anxiety or whatever is the noise and the medication filters that out.

Re: ADHD Drugs Don't Boost Kids' Grades, Studies Find

#113

Post by akiselev » Fri, Jul 12, 2013, 10:24 PM UTC

incongruity wrote: post #59

benjamincburns wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had some trepidation over this when deciding whether or not to post my own anecdotes. In the end I decided that while it's not useful as a criticism of the study it's absolutely useful to curb the conclusion, that ADHD drugs are broadly ineffective, which this presentation of the study might suggest. Edit: As an example the caption of Dr. Farah's photo reads "Dr. Martha Farah and colleagues found no cognitive benef…

Okay, pick some other metric – the lack of grade improvement starts to cut away at the possible claims for cognitive improvement, on the whole, assuming the science is good. On the other hand, if they were sloppy, it could potentially argue for a multimodal distribution that when forced into being viewed as an average (or with other tools that assume a unimodal distribution) then the effect gets washed out. One possi…

Another anecdote but a very applicable one: a fellow nerd in high school had terrible grades, before and after starting Vyvanse (re-patented version of Adderall) around the end of sophomore year. However, he was able to focus in the biochemistry class and despite the fact that he still received bad grades for lack of caring, his medication helped him discover that he loved chemistry. A year later he was accepted to an Ivy League on a 3.0 unweighted GPA because he was able to throw a never before possessed focus at an internship at Caltech where he became a published scientist within a year.

Grade improvements (along with the possibility that over prescribing is skewing the data) are a terrible metric, and a better one would be interpersonal relationships and how they behave in the classroom, which is much harder to measure. If a child is diagnosed pretty late (late elementary or middle school) they might also have a LOT to really catch up on. Just because they can focus doesn't mean they are prepared to deal with the material given to them.

Re: ADHD Drugs Don't Boost Kids' Grades, Studies Find

#114

Post by blueprint » Sun, Jul 14, 2013, 11:32 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #86

blueprint wrote: post #57

Of coures not. Those drugs don't address the root cause.

Which are unknown, might be (currently) unfixable, and more than likely are completely irrelevant. One of the reasons Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy states is for it being effective is essentially ignoring the "root causes" (that may as well be already gone) of problems in favour of actually fixing it.

They may be unknown to you, but that doesn't mean the causes themselves are unknown.

In order to find the root cause of a phenomenon, you must point out the phenomenon concretely enough - you need to know what you are diagnosing. That's the first step.

Then we need to look at cases.

It's foolish to try to say the causes are unknown without discussing these concrete matters.

Re: ADHD Drugs Don't Boost Kids' Grades, Studies Find

#115

Post by loceng » Mon, Jul 15, 2013, 3:24 PM UTC

dedward wrote: post #107

loceng wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During your "doctor recommended breaks" - try doing diet cleanses, elimination diet. Many foods, very common ones - wheat, dairy, eggs, soy, potatoes, almonds, etc - can cause ADD-like thinking through irritation (that you may notice or not) in your intestinal tract, etc.. Then there is also childhood emotion repression that could be a cause to ADD / scattered thinking. Food and past trauma are two things to always l…

is there any scientific evidence for "cleanses" at all? Because the word "cleanse" sets off my BS detector like crazy.

It just means reviewing and cleaning up your diet and/or giving your digestive system a break - either with a full fast (water only), or limiting what you eat. There are gimmicky cleanses, just like there are gimmicky fitness products, etc..