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FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

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261–270 of 358 posts

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do lower reading comprehension, stunted long and short term memory, and a constantly wandering mind also factor in there? Yes! These are even pretty common symptoms addressed in youth. And the rest of your comment is pretty much the story of my life give or take a few degrees. If these are still difficulties for you or if you ever find them to be again, I highly encourage learning more about how ADHD presents in ad…

Do you have any tips on dealing with these issues as an adult? I saw meditation mentioned at least.

Do you have the attention span to meditate? I mean maybe it could help ADHD if you are super interested in it so you hyper focus on it but otherwise it would be a chore.

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#262
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right. I didn’t like that bit of my comment, and was in the process of lopping it off when you were composing your reply. Apologies for not getting the edit done in time. Mostly I’m alarmed that so many parents are happy to put their small children on a lifetime supply of medicine for something that’s not immediately life threatening.

> Mostly I’m alarmed that so many parents are happy to put their small children on a lifetime supply of medicine for something that’s not immediately life threatening. I don't think you get it. My son can either be on medicine, or he can fail middle school, and high school and be uneducated. If you're volunteering to sit next to him, and redirect him to his work every 3 minutes, or pay for someone to do it, by all me…

This is exactly what it is like.

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#263

Seems that lots of people only think ADHD people have a hard time paying attention. If it was that simple I would be so happy. Here are just a few of the things I struggle with. - Will power. People with ADHD struggle sooooo much with will power. It’s a constant struggle with everything in life and really wears you down. - Constantly putting on a fake front pretending you don’t have ADHD. - Rejection sensitivity - Fe…

Question - I've managed (bottom-up, servant-leadership, small smart teams) a few very very smart people who may or not have had ADHD, or been partially on a spectrum or ... I truly appreciated the awesome work and have been open and honest and dealt with all sorts of emotional issues and variable progress on simple tasks and diving down rat-holes etc and seen some amazing overall results and had some great co-workers. The area I really struggle with is when people get temporarily obsessed with a topic that is so far removed from the project and its goals, that I can't cover them e.g. they want to completely redevelop an established, adjacent area of expertise (new to them) from scratch. Any advice on how to have this dialog up-front e.g. we have a software project and I'll back you a long way on these areas A B C for good exploratory work, but designing a new compiler or doing a full org redesign or building custom hardware is not something I can back you on so can we agree that at the outset and just trust me, or let's agree a protocol for how to deal with these situations?

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#264

Seems that lots of people only think ADHD people have a hard time paying attention. If it was that simple I would be so happy. Here are just a few of the things I struggle with. - Will power. People with ADHD struggle sooooo much with will power. It’s a constant struggle with everything in life and really wears you down. - Constantly putting on a fake front pretending you don’t have ADHD. - Rejection sensitivity - Fe…

> - Emotions swinging from happy to angry in a flash For me this falls under a general "lack of proprioception" in which I'm bad at recognising both bodily and emotional feelings until they hit a certain threshold, at which point they surprise me at full force. It does have some advantages as an adult - I'm very emotionally steady due to not being influenced by every emotion - but on the other hand it means I miss em…

This really hits home for me. I didn't even recognize this tendency in myself for years, until my now wife pointed it out to me.

One thing that's really helped me is to periodically sit down with a piece of paper in a quiet room and answer the question: "what am I ignoring right now?"

The stuff I write down _always_ surprises me. Always.

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make some good points here, but it's important to avoid the false dichotomy that medication is either good for everyone or always scary and dangerous. Stimulants for ADHD have a long history of use (Ritalin's been approved for medical use since 1955!), and there's lots of scientific literature indicating it can have a variety of long-term benefits for people with ADHD. That said, no two people are the same, and t…

You're confused on some basic science. Lisdexamfetamine (Vyvanse) is a lysine molecule bonded to a Dexedrine molecule. An equivalent dose of Lisdexamfetamine weighs twice as much (263.38 g/mol) as dextroamphetamine (135.21 g/mol) Additionally, the body needs to digest the lysine before the dexedrine can cross the blood brain barrier. That slows down absorption, and means an equivalent dose has a lower peak concentrat…

I appreciate the correction!

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey I never ran a day in my life. I found out if I take steroids I can jump start my running in 3 months. Turns out I’m a great runner, so I must have been a great runner all this time and just need a therapeutic dose of steroids to show that I had chemical deficiency that easily solved it. Now life is much more fair for me. Look, once your life depends on a decision you know was a trade off (you feel entitled to wha…

Screw it. Ya caught me. So, you surmise ADHD doesn't exist, and that all the phenomena is is that it's a convenient excuse for people to take performance enhancing narcotics? Is that about what you're at?

[deleted]

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#268
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you’re insinuating that adhd (or, executive functions disorders) don’t exist. 1. there is lots of evidence showing that “something” is wrong with lots of peoples executive functions and that this observed problem is hereditary. 2. this is pretty insensitive. everybody does have these symptoms to some extent as you executive functions can’t be running 100% all the time. just like everyone has varying degrees of sight.…

That's a pretty uncharitable take of his view. Rather, he seems to be claiming that it's heavily overdiagnosed. Looking at the numbers, I'm leaning towards that too. 9.4 percent of children are diagnosed with ADHD, and that's just the confirmed cases, nothing about estimated prevalence. Either we're screwing up the diagnostic criteria and overlabelling people (or worse, we're diagnosing them out of convenience), or w…

Incidence rate is probably higher than you think. Average college enrollment rate is less than 50%. Worse, 25% of kids drop out of high school. Also the kids who have been expelled due to behavioral problems.

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#269
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right. I didn’t like that bit of my comment, and was in the process of lopping it off when you were composing your reply. Apologies for not getting the edit done in time. Mostly I’m alarmed that so many parents are happy to put their small children on a lifetime supply of medicine for something that’s not immediately life threatening.

> Mostly I’m alarmed that so many parents are happy to put their small children on a lifetime supply of medicine for something that’s not immediately life threatening. I don't think you get it. My son can either be on medicine, or he can fail middle school, and high school and be uneducated. If you're volunteering to sit next to him, and redirect him to his work every 3 minutes, or pay for someone to do it, by all me…

It's a shame most can't afford homeschooling.

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#270

Seems that lots of people only think ADHD people have a hard time paying attention. If it was that simple I would be so happy. Here are just a few of the things I struggle with. - Will power. People with ADHD struggle sooooo much with will power. It’s a constant struggle with everything in life and really wears you down. - Constantly putting on a fake front pretending you don’t have ADHD. - Rejection sensitivity - Fe…

Why does no one focus on the positives? Yeah, there's shit to deal with but there are also lots of good points:

* Ability to assimilate and process information * Ability to hyperfocus * Shit loads of empathy (can get a bit out of hand thought!) * Creativity

There are lots more things that we're better at than non-ADD people, I just can't think of any at the moment! See Lynn Weiss' book for a more comprehensive list.

I think it's important for ADD people to not play the victim; yeah we're different and yeah, society doesn't favour our way of thinking but it's not all bad.

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