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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Treatment and medication
In some trials the dummy treatment helps around half the people who receive it, and there is work showing benefit even when people were told outright they were taking a placebo. A parent who hands over a supplement with real confidence may see their child settle better that night, and something actually happened there. The honest use of this is to prepare people properly, explain clearly and be warm while you do it, which lifts the effect of a real treatment rather than standing in for one.
This explains how treatments work. Never start, stop or change a medication because of something you read here.
A healing for what is in your hearts (Quran 10:57). What settles the heart is spoken of as part of healing, not as something separate from it.
يونس
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّاسُ قَدۡ جَآءَتۡكُم مَّوۡعِظَةࣱ مِّن رَّبِّكُمۡ وَشِفَآءࣱ لِّمَا فِي ٱلصُّدُورِ وَهُدࣰ ى وَرَحۡمَةࣱ لِّلۡمُؤۡمِنِينَ
People, a teaching from your Lord has come to you, a healing for what is in [your] hearts, and guidance and mercy for the believers
Qur’an 10:57read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A triple blind randomised trial in adults with ADHD set standard EEG neurofeedback against a convincing sham and against a meta cognitive group therapy. Designs like this exist precisely because the ritual around a treatment does measurable work, and separating the two is difficult. Read that as evidence that expectancy is powerful, which cuts both ways: it can be put to honest use, and it can make a useless product look impressive.
Schönenberg M, Wiedemann E, Schneidt A, Scheeff J, Logemann A, Keune PM, Hautzinger M. (2017). Neurofeedback, sham neurofeedback, and cognitive-behavioural group therapy in adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: a triple-blind, randomised, controlled trial.. The lancet. Psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Expecting relief engages real machinery in the body, so how a treatment is given changes how much it gives back.
Using expectancy honestly never means letting somebody believe a treatment does more than it does.
Part of why so many adults are coming forward now is that well known people have said out loud that they have this. Seeing someone capable say it makes the asking cost less.
If therapy for ADHD did little for your thirteen year old, that is not a sign they were not trying. The self monitoring it leans on is still being built at that age, and it builds later in ADHD than in most.
If mindfulness is going to help with ADHD, the version with a chance is small and spread out. A few seconds of noticing, several times a day, rather than one long sitting you come to dread.