Treatments for ADHD: beyond stimulants
If your child has ADHD or you're curious about its treatments, check out my piece for Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00095-w All brains are different. ADHD isn't a "problem", it's a variant in brain wiring. We can harness its advantages, or alter our environment to reduce the disadvantages. Along the way, we can also treat the symptoms that are making life hard. This feature is about that. Main messages: - Stimulants like Ritilin and Adderall work really, really well: they are some of the most efficacious drugs on the market for ANY condition. - These drugs improve all kinds of measures, not just the core symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity, but also self esteem, reduced car crashes, less criminal behaviour, etc. But they don't magically make your kid smarter (they don't necessarily do better on tests) and they might wear off after a few years of use. - stimulants come with issues for some people (addictive qualit...