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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Treatment and medication
This is not a push to medicate. Families weigh side effects, age, other conditions and their own convictions, and those are proper things to weigh. What is not fair is being handed alternatives without being told where they sit relative to the main option, because then a decision gets made without the central piece of information in it. Know the size of the difference first, then decide what you want to do about it.
This explains how treatments work. Never start, stop or change a medication because of something you read here.
There is healing for people (Quran 16:69). Healing is described as coming through created, ordinary things, which is a gentle answer to the idea that medicine sits outside faith.
النحل
ثُمَّ كُلِي مِن كُلِّ ٱلثَّمَرَٰتِ فَٱسۡلُكِي سُبُلَ رَبِّكِ ذُلُلࣰ اۚ يَخۡرُجُ مِنۢ بُطُونِهَا شَرَابࣱ مُّخۡتَلِفٌ أَلۡوَٰنُهُۥ فِيهِ شِفَآءࣱ لِّلنَّاسِۚ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَأٓيَةࣰ لِّقَوۡمࣲ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ
Then feed on all kinds of fruit and follow the ways made easy for you by your Lord.’ From their bellies comes a drink of different colours in which there is healing for people. There truly is a sign in this for those who think
Qur’an 16:69read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review with network meta-analyses compared pharmacological, psychological and complementary treatments for ADHD in children and adolescents against one another, rather than each against placebo separately. That design is what allows any statement about one option outperforming another. It covers children and adolescents, and it is a comparison of averages, so it tells you the general picture and not what will happen for one particular child.
Catalá-López F, Hutton B, Núñez-Beltrán A, Page MJ, Ridao M, Macías Saint-Gerons D, Catalá MA, Tabarés-Seisdedos R, Moher D. (2017). The pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children and adolescents: A systematic review with network meta-analyses of randomised trials.. PloS one doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
You can only make a real choice about treatment if you know how the options compare to each other.
Any decision about medication belongs with a prescriber who knows the person's history, not with a course, an article or a forum.
People who are sleeping properly, eating properly and moving a bit tend to want each other more. The unglamorous parts of life management run closer to the bedroom than either of you might expect.
The trouble now is not that nothing works. It is that the things which work are spread unevenly, and whether a family gets any of them depends heavily on where they happen to live.
You are going to look things up anyway, so start somewhere with proper review behind it. CHADD and Understood both have professionals checking what goes on the page.