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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Medication and how it works
That is why setting medication against the other approaches usually misses the point. The plan you could not keep last year may be perfectly keepable now, so it is worth going back to something you had written off as not for you. Leave it a few weeks until things have settled rather than changing everything in the same fortnight.
This explains how treatments work. Never start, stop or change a medication because of something you read here.
'God wishes to lighten your burden' (Quran 4:28). Something that makes the rest of your effort possible is a lightening rather than a shortcut around it.
النساء
يُرِيدُ ٱللَّهُ أَن يُخَفِّفَ عَنكُمۡۚ وَخُلِقَ ٱلۡإِنسَٰنُ ضَعِيفࣰ ا
God wishes to lighten your burden; man was created weak
Qur’an 4:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A randomised trial in adults who were already taking medication for ADHD added cognitive behavioural therapy and found improvement in core symptoms, though the effects on the other problems alongside were mixed. The useful shape of it is that the therapy added something on top of medication rather than competing with it. It was one trial in adults, so read it as support for combining rather than as proof for everyone.
Young S, Khondoker M, Emilsson B, Sigurdsson JF, Philipp-Wiegmann F, Baldursson G, Olafsdottir H, Gudjonsson G. (2015). Cognitive-behavioural therapy in medication-treated adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and co-morbid psychopathology: a randomized controlled trial using multi-level analysis.. Psychological medicine doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Every other approach asks you to start, keep going and remember, which is exactly the part being helped.
Most resistance to medication turns out to be something a person heard rather than something they decided. Work out which one you are holding, because the two need different things.
Capsules are not the only option any more. Long acting liquids and chewable forms exist, so a child who cannot manage a pill does not have to be left with nothing or with a dose that runs out by lunchtime.
Medication does not simply turn the brain up. On scans the regions that should be busy during a task get busier, and the ones that should stay quiet settle.