Troubled Teens Resources

Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder
has long been an area of concern in teen crisis intervention. The condition can seriously sabotage a teen’s efforts at school, thus bringing on feeling of inadequacy, leading to social and emotional problems. For those parents who have the finances to try alternative treatments for ADD , neurofeedback, not covered by most insurance policies, is getting good parental reviews.

“The concept of neurofeedback, also known as EEG biofeedback, dates back decades, to the discovery of measurable electrical impulses in the brain. Research and recent improvements in technology have made its use more practical for a broad range of clinicians.

A typical session, 20 to 45 minutes long, involves watching a computer screen with electrodes pasted to your head. The brain scan - signals go out, not in - delivers feedback of neuronal activity. Patterns are visible to both therapist and client in real time.

Acting somewhat like a coach, the practitioner monitors brain activity and presents various computer exercises or games - a child might work to control the successes of hungry Pac-Man-type blobs, for example - to train the client to shift the particular brain-wave patterns that play a role in a given neurological condition.

The technique has been most widely studied and applied with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, although it is used to treat a wide range of disorders linked to abnormal patterns of brain waves.”

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Parents who are concerned that their teen or child may have Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder will be doing a great deal of research and will run into much conflicting information. The online site ADDitude publishes a great deal of useful information that can help parents evaluate their own son or daughter’s potential ADD. They offer a list of “myths” associated with the disorder. The complete list can be found at the link below.

• Children who are given special accommodations because of their ADHD are getting an unfair advantage

  The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires that public schools address the special needs of all children with disabilities, including children with ADHD. Special accommodations, such as extra time on tests, simply level the playing field so that kids with ADHD can learn as successfully as their non-ADHD classmates.

• Children with ADHD eventually outgrow their condition
  
  More than 70 percent of the individuals who have ADHD in childhood continue to have it in adolescence. Up to 50 percent will continue to have it in adulthood.

  Although it’s been estimated that 6 percent of the adult population has ADHD, the majority of those adults remain undiagnosed, and only one in four of them seek treatment. Yet, without help, adults with ADHD are highly vulnerable to depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. They often experience career difficulties, legal and financial problems, and troubled personal relationships.

• ADHD affects only boys

  Girls are just as likely to have ADHD as are boys, and gender makes no difference in the symptoms caused by the disorder. But because this myth persists, boys are more likely to be diagnosed than girls.

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Mental health professionals are continuing to urge parents to bring nature back into their families lives. Parents are looking towards nature to offset and diminish the many negatives of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder by removing iPods from their teens ears and putting hiking boots on their feet.

From Stephen Scharper at Children & Nature Network:

“… Louv writes…as the young spend less and less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow, physiologically and psychologically, and this reduces the richness of human experience.”

Does that strike you as a very vital observation? The human experience is indeed very rich, a tapestry woven with thousands of memories and emotions. At least it used to be. But do teens even understand how vast and infinite the human experience is or has their vision been narrowed and truncated, their emotional range attenuated?

The connection to teen age drug abuse might be tenuous, but. speculatively speaking, if teens are not taught how to extract all of the richness of experience from their lives, are drugs acting as a substitute? Does life seem so flat to teenagers that drugs offer them a depth of emotion that prior generations used to obtain by riding bikes from dawn to dusk on hot summer days, by laying next to a pond and listening to frogs and counting stars.

“A kid today,” he writes, “can likely tell you about the Amazon rain forest — but not about the last time he or she explored the woods in solitude, or lay in a field listening to the wind and watching clouds move.”

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Teen crisis intervention campaigns directed at college students try to educate both parents and students about the dangers of taking drugs prescribed for Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder recreationally. Unfortunately, Adderall has taken it’s place next to Ritalin and Oxycontin as the favored prescription that college teens abuse.

“Most popularly, Adderall has become a cheap fix for millions of college students and various other young adult professionals with places to go and people to see.”

Unfortunately these teens also combine Adderrall with alcohol, the combination allowing them to be drunkenly alert, one supposes. It seems to produce a high that they relish and the dangers inherent in mixing drugs are, as usual, ignored.

“Adderall is also used by those who want to stay up all night partying and don’t feel that they can do it of their own volition. This provides for a most dangerous combination: Adderall, a stimulant, and alcohol, a depressant, do not mix well. The medication provides a feeling of mental clarity and alertness that one does not necessarily have in actuality after imbibing for hours. This means that you don’t feel as drunk as you actually are, and that you wake up with a hangover from the depths of hell, spit straight out of Persephone’s lair, if you can manage to fall asleep in the first place (and wake up afterward).”

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And then you crash. Crashing is the term used for the experience of “coming down” off a drug. It is usually what triggers a search for more because it is extremely unpleasant. And that is one of the many ways addiction begins.

When a parent receives any diagnosis for their teen it is imperative that they get more than one opinion. Especially in the area of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder where even mental health professionals will tell you that too many children and teens are being misdiagnosed.

“When Leslie Morley’s daughter was in the third grade, her teacher believed she had a learning disability and tried to put her in remedial classes. When tested for intelligence, however, results showed that she was an extremely bright girl.

Nadia Webb, a neuropsychologist and faculty member at James Madison University, discussed the misdiagnosis of gifted children and adults…”Children are easily misdiagnosed by teachers and administrators,” Webb said.”

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Feedback from colleagues and friends seem to confirm the alacrity with which some teachers jump on to the ADHD bandwagon.Parents with gifted children already recognize them as such and are well aware of those traits that are so easily mis-identified as ADHD when, in many cases, it amounts to little more than boredom.

Elaine’s daughter, a budding musician,was always scribbling new compositions when she should have been doing math. Lyrics filled her mind instead of spelling lists. Her natural shyness coupled with her preoccupation with the music in her head triggered a diagnosis of bi-polar. Thorough testing revealed a mentally healthy, if frustrated, musical prodigy. An extensive search of teen boarding schools and specialty schools produced a private girl’s music academy a few hundred miles away. Though the separation is hard, her daughter’s happiness and academic progress makes it well worth it.

For basic guidance and information on ADHD , visit Troubled Teens.us.

There have been reports for decades that additives can cause hyperactivity in kids. But it is information parents with kids diagnosed for Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder have come to take quite seriously.

A friend whose son was diagnosed with ADHD has been researching private teen boarding schools and was surprised to find several that many have menus available for ADHD kids who do not use medication. Besides eliminating sugars and fats, they offer foods without additives.

“Research…found that artificial food additives can trigger hyperactive behavior in children.

The study tested a range of E-numbers and a common preservative found in foods popular with kids - soft drinks, sweets and ice cream - on a group of three-year-olds and another group of children aged eight and nine.

Those who consumed a cocktail of these artificial nasties became loud, boisterous and were unable to concentrate on one toy or task.

The additives even affected kids with no history of hyperactivity or attention deficit disorder.

The Foods Standards Agency now recommends that parents with hyperactive kids should cut the additives used in the study out of their diet. But it stopped short of proposing a complete ban, which has enraged those who believe additives may explain the explosion of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Dr Sue Baic says: “The study supports what we dietitians have known for a long time - that feeding children on diets largely consisting of processed foods, which may also be high in fat, salt or sugar, is not best for health.”

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Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder is often associated with other disorders. Teens diagnosed with ADHD are also often experiencing depression or extreme anxiety. That is one reason why early diagnosis is important. Teen age drug abuse is often a concern for the parent who doesn’t wish to medicate their teen. But, by the same token, an undiagnosed ADHD teen, in attempting to diminish their anxiety or blow off their depression, often starts to self-medicate on their own.

The newest reports suggest that along with anxiety and depression may come a more increased risk for bulimia and anorexia.

“Results showed that girls with ADHD were 3.6 times more likely than girls without ADHD to develop eating disorders. Also, girls with both ADHD and an eating disorder were more likely than girls who only had ADHD to experience depression, anxiety, and disruptive behavior disorder.

They concluded that ADHD increases the risk of developing an eating disorder significantly.

This research could have an influence on the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD in young girls. Because these girls are so much more likely to develop an eating disorder, it may be essential that girls with ADHD be screened regularly for eating disorders or unhealthy eating attitudes.

With eating disorders, prevention is often much more effective than treatment after the fact. If ADHD is a risk factor for an eating disorder, doctors have one more tool for detecting and preventing eating disorders early, making recovery much more likely.”

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Teens at risk for teen age drug abuse often fall into experimenting with drugs as a means of dealing with their extreme frustrations at school. Poor academic performance or an inability to keep up with classmates can be cause for humiliation and fear of rejection. Very often these are bright teens whose parents are bewildered that their grades do not reflect that.

Immediately a parent tests for Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder and dyslexia and other conditions. But researchers are now looking at other possible reasons for poor school performance. No, not another disorder, but it points to the possibility that the “powers that be” in academia are demanding more from children and teens than their brain development allows for.

“Ellie has a problem with working memory, a term used to describe the ability to retain information from the top of a page to the bottom. Working memory comes under the umbrella of executive function, a thinking skill that refers to the tasks executives tend to excel at, such as prioritizing, organizing, and mentally shifting information around. It’s a skill that develops progressively, starting in the elementary years and continuing into adulthood.

If you’ve never heard of executive function, brace yourself. It’s bursting onto the educational scene.

…educators and psychologists say increased academic demands in the last five years or so are straining students’ developmental abilities to remember facts and organize thoughts. What may look like a learning disability or a behavioral disorder may be neurological wiring that needs to mature. Some children grow into it or manage to get by. Others, such as Ellie Honan, just can’t keep pace with the academic demands despite the internal struggle.”

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A diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder does not instantly sentence your teen to years of Ritalin or Adderall. Many parents are dismayed to contemplate the possibility of medicating their teenager, concerned about possible drug dependencies later in life as well as possible health ramifications.

Parents who wish to exhaust every “natural”, non-medicated alternative choose to work with those mental health professionals who have developed programs that teach the ADHD teen behavioral “tricks”, e.g., harnessing the energy of ADHD, learning to utilize hyper focus and gaining mastery over restlessness and anxiety. Schools for troubled teens and specialty schools have emerged, over the years, specializing in “non-medicinal interventions”.

“A U.S. study shows non-medicinal interventions help prevent behavioral and academic problems associated with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Researchers from Lehigh Valley Hospital… focused on 135 children aged 3 to 5 who showed significant symptoms of ADHD — a mental disorder that makes it difficult for children to control their behavior and pay attention. Early intervention techniques included highly individualized programs that often rely on positive supports to reinforce behavior.

Using a variety of early intervention strategies, parents reported, on average, a 17-percent decrease in aggression and a 21-percent improvement in their children’s social skills. In the classroom, teachers saw a 28-percent improvement in both categories. Early literacy skills improved up to three times over their baseline status.

The researchers suggest a multi-tiered approach to intervention…”Medication may address the symptoms of ADHD, but it does not necessarily improve children’s academic and social skills,” study leader George DuPaul said in a statement.”

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Any parent who has researched Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder will tell you that it can be a depressing venture. Worse case scenarios are that an undiagnosed ADHD teen will be more likely to do drugs, deal with more severe emotional issues and may even end up attending schools for troubled teens, or drug rehab.

Then some speculative research is interesting and, if nothing else, gives food for thought.Much has been said in the last year about the fact that technology exacerbates conditions such as ADHD.

“In his book, Cleary cites research performed Oxford University neuroscience professor Susan Greenfield as noting in part “that the ubiquity of digital technology is altering the shape and chemistry of our brains, and that violent video games and intense online interactivity can generate mental disorders such as autism, attention deficit disorder, and hyperactivity.”

Another viewpoint hypothesizes that ADHD might be a “favorable evolutionary adaptation to our tech-centric world…”

“…the increase in ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) among the “Millennium Generation” of younger people could actually be the start of an “evolutionary adaptation” to the increasingly fast-paced world of digital technology.

…video games, texting, and other online applications are best performed by minds with the circuitry to jump at a nanosecond’s notice back and forth from screen to screen and application to application.

Following this proposition forward, the seeming inability of some younger folks to concentrate on just one thing, one thought, one application, could be attributed to a rewiring of neurons to keep up with the herky-jerky pace of life.”

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