Adult ADD Strengths

By combining behavioral therapy and medication researchers at the University at Buffalo have found they could reduce the amount of medication that children with ADD needed by two-thirds, according to a new study published in the May issue of Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology.

“One of the major findings of the study is that when using behavior modification, you can get away with tiny, tiny doses of medication, much lower than previously thought,” ADHD researcher William E. Pelham Jr., Distinguished Professor in the department of psychology, said in a prepared statement.”

“The researchers found that, when used alone, both behavior modification and a new methylphenidate (MPH) patch drug treatment were equally effective. Methylphenidate is the stimulant used in pill form in the ADHD drugs Concerta and Ritalin, the researchers said.

Combined treatment using behavior modification and the MPH patch was more effective than either treatment alone, the researchers found.”

I really believe that the best way to deal with your ADD is by multimodal treatment. Sometimes if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. ADD is a multi-dimensional condition so the treatment should be multi-dimensional as well. As Dr. Ed Hallowell author of says “Pills can be useful but pills don’t teach skills.”

Too bad ADD coaches can’t get funding from the drug companies to do research on the benefits of ADD coaching. I know there’s been research done on the ROI (return on investment) of executive coaching, but one of the reason they’ve done research in that field is the kind of fees they charge. I doubt if there’s a lot of ADD coaches out there billing $750-$1000 a month for coaching ADDers.

Businesses will often invest more money in their employees then individuals will invest in themselves. I wonder if anyone’s calculated the HROI, human return on investment?

The ADD medications can help your neurobiology and when you add other treatments such as therapy, ADD coaching , exercise, diet, nutrition, meditation, support groups, stress reduction, you’re far more likely to be successful than if you just tried one treatment.

If you do meditation, make sure you try the active kinds of meditation at first, not just trying to stare at a wall and think of nothing. Starting out trying to do the latter kind of mediation is a sure recipe for frustration for ADDers.

So I’d suggest try yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, walking meditation, guided meditations on CD, breath mediations, mantras etc. It can be religious meditation, spiritual meditation or just simply awareness type meditations. A good book to get started is Ram Dass’s book, Journey of Awakening : A Meditator’s Guidebook I have it at home and it’s a good overall book on meditation for beginners, it covers many types of mediation, how to improve your mediation, and how to deal with some of the obstacles on the path.

I’ve done all of the above and am currently doing Qi Gong with Grandmaster Shou-Yu Liang here in Vancouver. He started doing martial arts at the age of 6 in China and teaches worldwide. Here’s an interesting story about him in Kung Fu Magazine.