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Despite concerns over the rising use of antipsychotic  drugs to treat young people, little has been known about trends and usage patterns in the United States before this latest research, which was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health. Mark Olfson, M.D., M.P.H., of the Department of Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons and Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York City, and colleagues Marissa King, Ph.D., Yale, New Haven, Connecticut, and Michael Schoenbaum, Ph.D., NIMH, report their findings on July 1 in  JAMA Psychiatry . "No prior study has had the data to look at age patterns in antipsychotic use among children the way we do here," said co-author Michael Schoenbaum, Ph.D., senior advisor for mental health services, epidemiology and economics at NIMH. "What's especially important is the finding that around 1.5 percent of boys aged 10-18 are on antipsychotics,...

A systematic review was led by the University of Exeter Medical School funded by NIHR's Health Research Technology Assessment programme  and supported by the NIHR Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care South West Peninsula (PenCLAHRC). The review has concluded that non-drug interventions in schools may be effective in improving outcomes such as performance in standardised tests for children with ADHD. The team found 54 studies (39 randomised controlled trials and 15 non randomised studies) that tested many different ways of supporting these children, such as having daily report cards filled in by teachers and parents to give consistent and regular feedback, or study and organisational skills training, which can help children achieve better attainment levels, reduce hyperactive behaviour and increase attention. However, the research, published in the journal  Health Technology Assessment  on July 1, also found so many different types of str...

The medical study was published in the July-August 2015 issue of the  Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine . People who are chemically intolerant often have serious reactions to common chemicals and some become too sick to carry out routine functions. Chemical intolerance affects about 10 percent to 30 percent of the U.S. population. Developmental disorders such as autism and attention-deficit disorder affect one in six children in the United States. The study included 282 mothers of children who had ASD and 258 mothers of children diagnosed with ADHD. The control group consisted of 154 mothers whose children had no developmental disorders. The study was based on maternal responses to the Quick Environmental Exposure and Sensitivity Inventory, or QEESI, a 50-question survey used by physicians worldwide to diagnose chemical intolerance. "We are most concerned about how vulnerable the children with ADHD and autism were to environmental exposures," said the...

That praise, or other possible reward, improves the performance of children with ADHD on certain cognitive tasks, but until a recent study led by researchers from the University at Buffalo, it wasn't clear if that result was due to heightened motivation inspired by positive reinforcement or because those with ADHD simply had greater room for improvement at certain tasks relative to their peers without such a diagnosis. "Our results suggest that the motivation piece is critical," says Whitney Fosco, a graduate student in the Department of Psychology in the UB College of Arts and Sciences. "Kids with ADHD showed more improvement because they are more motivated by the opportunity to gain rewards, not because they simply did worse from the beginning." The findings  come out of a novel study published in the journal  Behavioral and Brain Functions  that collectively examined two leading theories on ADHD, combining what previous work had mostly looked at separat...

Amongst adults with a historical past of TBI, 5.9 per cent reported having been identified with ADHD of their lifetime and one other 6.6 per cent screened optimistic for ADHD when the self-report scale was performed by researchers. Credit score: © Feng Yu / Fotolia A brand new research has discovered a "vital affiliation" between adults who've suffered a traumatic mind harm in some unspecified time in the future of their lives and who even have consideration deficit hyperactive dysfunction. The research, revealed within the  Journal of Psychiatric Analysis , helps analysis that discovered an identical affiliation in youngsters, stated Dr. Gabriela Ilie, lead writer of the research and a post- doctoral  fellow at St. Michael's Hospital. The info used within the grownup research was collected by the Centre for Dependancy and Psychological Well being's Monitor, a steady, cross-sectional pho...

The findings, published today in the journal  European Child Adolescent Psychiatry , suggest that aspects of ADHD may persist into adulthood, even when current diagnostic criteria fail to identify the disorder. ADHD is a disorder characterised by short attention span, restlessness and impulsivity, and is usually diagnosed in childhood or adolescence. Estimates suggest that more than three in every 100 boys and just under one in every 100 girls has ADHD. Less is known about the extent to which the disorder persists into adulthood, with estimates suggesting that between 10-50% of children still have ADHD in adulthood. Diagnosis in adulthood is currently reliant on meeting symptom checklists (such as the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual). Some have speculated that as the brain develops in adulthood, children may grow out of ADHD, but until now there has been little rigorous evidence to support this. So far, most of the research that has follow...

Telomeres cap the ends of chromosomes and act as protection against the loss of protein-coding DNA during cell division. While telomere shortening happens naturally with aging, researches indicate the process is accelerated by psychological and biological stress. The shorter the telomeres are, shorter is the biological "life expectancy" of one. The study, published in  Frontiers of Molecular Neuroscience , assessed the length of telomeres from 61 ADHD children (age 6 to 16) and their parents. Even among the children, who are beginning their lives, researchers found shorter telomeres than those that would be expected for their ages. Although mother's telomeres were also shorter, they did not find any alteration in the father's telomere length. The researchers believe the phenomenon is due to the stress that ADHD symptoms generate for the children and their mothers. Mothers are in most cases the main caretaker of the offspring, showing higher levels of depressive ...

In a study to be presented at a national meeting Oct. 4, researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center have found no increased risk for death or changes in cardiac vital signs, such as blood pressure or heart rate, even for children with ADHD and severe heart conditions. They also found that when treated with stimulant medications , patients had significant improvements in ADHD symptoms as measured by standardized rating scales. "Children with congenital heart disease are at high risk for ADHD, but fears about cardiovascular side effects, including sudden death, limit the use of stimulant medications," says Julia Anixt, MD, a developmental and behavioral pediatrician at Cincinnati Children's and senior author of the study. "This study indicates that stimulants are both effective and safe when prescribed with appropriate monitoring and in collaboration with the patient's cardiologist." The study will be presented by Pon Trairatvoraku...

Every state in the U.S. has passed legislation pertaining to sport-related concussion. In general, the laws mandate that injured student athletes be evaluated by a qualified health care professional before they can return to participating in sports. Decisions about returning to activity are based on symptom reporting. Grant L. Iverson, Ph.D., of Harvard Medical School, Boston, and coauthors sought to clarify factors associated with concussion-like symptoms in uninjured adolescents using data from more than 30,000 student athletes. It is important for clinicians to understand factors that may be associated with baseline symptom reporting so they can properly make decisions about when athletes may return to activity. The authors found symptom reporting . was more common in girls than boys and that in the absence of a recent concussion, 19 percent of boys and 28 percent of girls reported a group of symptoms similar to postconcussional syndrome. Preexisting psychiatric, development...

Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) examined 2011 Medicaid outpatient and prescription drug claims from multiple states across the United States. Among their key findings: More than 1 in 4 children between the ages of 2 and 17 who were in foster care had received an ADHD diagnosis, compared to about 1 in 14 of all other children in Medicaid. Children with ADHD who were in foster care were also more likely to have another disorder, with roughly half also diagnosed with conditions such as oppositional defiant disorder, depression, or anxiety. This is compared to about 1 in 3 children with ADHD in Medicaid who were not in foster care. Among children with an ADHD diagnosis, those in foster care were as likely as others to be treated with ADHD medication but were more likely to have received psychological services; About 3 out of 4 of the children with ADHD in foster care received some psychological care in 2011. Lead author Melissa Danielson, MSPH,...