ADD/ADHD: Does stimulant therapy (i.e. Ritalin, Adderall, etc.) help?

Does stimulant therapy (i.e. Ritalin, Adderall, etc.) help?

Given that a study by Washington State University researchers showed that physician-diagnosed ADHD children will be prescribed stimulant medication between 63% (girls) and 72% (boys) of the time, it’s important to know whether this is helpful.

The answer is, yes, and also, no. The NIH put it this way in their consensus statement:

“As measured by attention/activity indices, patients with varying levels and types of problems (and even possibly unaffected individuals) may benefit from stimulant therapy. These studies … have established the efficacy of stimulants and psychosocial treatments for alleviating the symptoms of ADHD and associated aggressiveness. … Of concern are the consistent findings that despite the improvement in core symptoms, there is little improvement in academic achievement or social skills.”

The largest study of ADHD children ever, the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA study), first reported after the release of the NIH statement, echoed this finding, relating both to the improvement of symptoms, and the lack of improvement in academic or social settings.

It also isn’t known as to whether or not stimulant medication improves other social outcomes, such as arrest rates and drug abuse.

... another random musing