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ADHD meds and substance abuse in girls

(Psych Central News) Researchers have found that treatment with stimulant drugs may significantly decrease the risk that girls with ADHD will begin smoking cigarettes or using alcohol or drugs. The discovery parallels the findings of several earlier studies in boys, which needed to be confirmed in girls. “Girls with ADHD actually tend to get into trouble [...]

Read the full article...

From Psych Central News.

this article reiterates past

articles paid for by drug companies:

Quote:

Disclosure: Dr. Wilens is a consultant for, has received grant/research support from, and is a member of the speakers bureaus of Abbott, Celltech, Eli Lilly, McNeil, Novartis, Pfizer, Shire Richwood, and GlaxoSmithKline.

from http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/477487

MGH doctors are not doing so well with disclosure these days.
re: Dr. Biederman and MGH in general.

But Mrs. D, do you think what they are talking about is true? I find this very interesting. I'm supposed to take ritalin but haven't for quite a few months. I should go back on it as it really helps me at work.

adults vs children...

The last major news release of this type concerned children..
and this one appears to also. That last one was funded by the makers of Concerta.

Adults with neuro problems, side effects from drugs used to treat chronic pain, patients with cognitive issues from aging
do use Ritalin and often successfully. Stimulants do not change anything however, and over time have a huge downside. Most of that is cardiovascular and patients should weigh their health to see if risk is worth the benefit. Also high dose stimulants, especially amphetamines can cause a reactive psychosis and aggression in some people.
For alerting adults with more complex problems, ProVigil appears safer (but some insurances still refuse to pay for it.).

One of the tricks that the drug companies use is to load their studies with kids who they know will respond in the way they want. Many drug studies are done this way unfortunately.

The issue here is that this study like the previous one, says that drug abuse in the FUTURE by the kids who took stimulants was averted. I personally don't think this can be claimed. In fact there are studies to show that kids who take stimulants become depressed adults. Other studies show that stimulants don't work after about two years or so as kids' brains mature.

I just don't care for this study at all, given the links the main researcher has to money from drug companies. MGH in general has been getting very bad press with revelations of professional unethical behavior in the area of drug studies.

My son took Ritalin for 5 yrs. We found another solution. A solution that was better, for him, without the horrible rebound side effects and tension. He is 27 now, and has done very well.

The medical model of stimulants for kids is flawed. We just don't know how the brain works well enough to find another answer(s).

I'll say this, our military has used amphetamines since before WWII. And it is a disgrace that some of the people who leave the armed forces left as addicts. This controversy has led to
investigating ProVigil as a substitute. The results of that are not in yet.

Research into addiction which involves many aspects of the complex nature of dopamine, and its transporters and receptors will provide the real answers, I think in the future!

I copied this discussion over here from the health news headlines forum as it may be of interest to other members here who may not see it there. There is also a copy of the news report on ADHD forum

That is a great idea! I am going to find the studies that
I referred to... and put them on the copied threads.

You and I go back a LONG time now, and understand this problem well. It parallels the problems with Tourette's treatments.

It is interesting to see that the drive to medicate small children and older children in general for ADHD is dropping some.
People ARE finding other solutions.

And I think the new food guidelines, removal of transfats, and introduction of "smart foods" with flax and fish oil in them, is helping as well.

lol..it's copied twice. i did it earlier. :p

:o deleted the duplicate....lol zealous teamwork :winky:

more information...

Here is some information that further illustrates the ineffectiveness of stimulants for ADHD:

Quote:

Week of Nov. 3, 2007; Vol. 172, No. 18 , p. 277
Stimulant Inaction: ADHD drug's mental lift proves surprisingly weak

Bruce Bower

Children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often calm down and behave better when taking the stimulant medication methylphenidate. Nonetheless, this drug largely fails to alleviate underlying mental difficulties considered crucial to ADHD, a new study finds.

Methylphenidate, better known as Ritalin, leaves intact a shortage of "executive" mental functions that many researchers suspect elicit ADHD-related behavior problems, say psychiatrist David R. Coghill of the University of Dundee, Scotland, and his colleagues. Executive-functioning tests focus on the ability to ignore distracting information, manipulate information in one's head, and shift attention from one attribute of an object to another.

"Even following clinical improvement with methylphenidate, there remain unaffected [neuropsychological] deficits," Coghill says.

In contrast, the researchers hold, stimulant treatment aids performance on a few basic memory tasks, such as tests of the ability to recognize a previously presented abstract pattern in a set of choices or to remember spatial locations of items in a previously observed scene.

The new study appears in the Nov. 1 Biological Psychiatry.

Coghill's team studied 75 boys, ages 7 to 15, diagnosed with ADHD at an outpatient psychiatric clinic. Participants received three treatments in different orders, each for 1 month: low-dose methylphenidate, high-dose methylphenidate, and placebo pills. Neither the boys nor the researchers knew which treatment a participant was receiving at a given time.

A majority of the youngsters behaved better during one or both of the drug treatments, according to parent and teacher reports.

Yet in testing on a battery of mental abilities before and after each phase of treatment, methylphenidate produced gains only in basic visual memory and in the ability to identify target images while ignoring distracting images. Even on the latter task, a simple probe of executive functioning, boys with ADHD performed as well, before the study, as boys with no psychiatric disorders did.

Stimulant treatment offered no benefits in complex tests of executive function, such as the ability to recall information needed to achieve a goal.

The study "raises questions about the effects of chronic stimulant treatment [on ADHD]," comment psychologist Scott H. Kollins and psychiatrist John S. March, both of Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., in an accompanying editorial.

A related investigation, published in the August Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, suggests that clinical benefits of stimulant treatment diminish over time. Psychiatrist Peter S. Jensen of Columbia University and his coworkers tracked 485 boys and girls with ADHD who received 14 months of intensive treatment with stimulants, behavior therapy, a combination of both, or routine community care.

Children who received medication showed the most improvement in ADHD symptoms. However, their behavioral advantage disappeared 2 years after completion of treatment.

The researchers also found that children with ADHD were taller and heavier than expected for their age before treatment but then showed stimulant-related decreases in growth rate. Three years of stimulant treatment stunted growth by almost 1 inch and by more than 4 pounds, they estimate.

from http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20071103/fob6.asp

This article is very interesting:
http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/reali...oolADHDalt.htm
Renegade School Board Member Educates Parents On ADHD Alternatives

Dr. Pelham describes what happened when he dared to tell the truth about a Concerta study/methodology:
http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/04/12/03.php

Here is a typical monograph from Dr. Biederman:
http://www.massgeneral.org/children/...biederman.aspx

Dr. Biederman has long been a pro drug advocate for small children and psychiatric issues..and now finds himself in deep trouble by not disclosing financial benefits he received for doing so:
http://www.naturalnews.com/023408.html

http://www.mindfreedom.org/kb/psych-...sley-v-harvard

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/us...in&oref=slogin
Other doctors including Dr. Wilens are mentioned in this New York Times article.

Why does this matter....? What is happening out there?

Well, when "distinguished" doctors are bought by drug companies, they then sway doctors in local areas, who have
limited access to facts.

What is becoming more obvious with time, is that this type of behavior is to benefit certain others, rather than the patients involved.

Right now, there is a movement to remove these economic incentives to doctors to sway other doctors. It is VERY NEW, but welcome!