ADD and ADHD

A Safer Way to Treat ADHD?

For parents worried about over-medicating children who have attention problems, behavioral therapy may be a welcome addition to treatment. This type of therapy helps someone with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, alter their behavior and thought patterns to learn how to relate to others and succeed.

In one of the more recent studies, published this May in Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, researchers from the University of Buffalo looked at the benefits of behavioral therapy on 27 children with ADHD between the ages of 6 and 12. They found that behavioral therapy could cut the need for stimulant drugs by up to two-thirds. Moreover, when drugs and behavioral therapy were combined, the two treatments were more effective in controlling ADHD than either used alone.

How does behavioral therapy work? Dr. J. Russell Ramsay, assistant director of the ADHD Research and Treatment Program at the University of Pennsylvania, answers some common questions about this treatment option.

What is behavioral therapy?
Behavioral therapy is a form of psychotherapy that involves an individual or a family sitting in a room with a counselor to talk about the problems that have led the individual to seek help. Unlike traditional forms of therapy, the focus is on the behaviors of the person and what contributes to these behavioral patterns.

How is behavioral therapy used to help somebody with ADHD?
There are a couple different ways that behavioral therapy can work. We know that ADHD shows up differently across the lifespan, therefore, behavioral therapies are used differently for individuals of different age groups.

For example, behavioral therapy for children with ADHD focuses on parent and teacher training, and how they can better understand and manage behaviors. We teach parents and teachers how to guide behaviors. We also work with the family to develop more structured household routines. That way, we can make sure that the patterns used at home are most effective for the ADHD symptoms.

With adolescents, we look at maintaining constructive communication, helping the parents think through the rules of the household. We establish the bedrock rules that the family really wants to establish, and what rules might be a little more negotiable. Some teens may also benefit from additional therapy to address how they think about their emerging identity and the role ADHD plays in that.

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