Practices

Every practice in the library, in one list. Narrow it by how long you have, who it is written for, and where you are right now.

What matches

289 practices

Narrow these down

You may hear that being treated as a child leaves an advantage that lasts even after you stop. It is a comforting claim and the strongest evidence does not quite bear it out.

The best known childhood trial followed its participants into their twenties. The early advantage of the assigned treatment faded, and the group…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 17:35One line of research

Atomoxetine works on noradrenaline alone, which is why it can help genuinely and still feel milder than a stimulant. That is the trade being made rather than a sign it is failing.

Noradrenaline at the front of the brain helps a signal stand out from the background noise, so lifting it steadies working memory and attention.…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:69One line of research

Guanfacine and clonidine arrived here sideways. Both were blood pressure medicines that doctors noticed helped with impulsivity, and the formal approval came long afterwards.

They act on receptors at the front of the brain that support working memory and holding a response back, which is a different route from the reuptake…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 20:114One line of research

Canada once pulled a stimulant from the market after four cardiac deaths, then reversed the decision. Three of the four had heart abnormalities from birth and the fourth had been hiking in desert heat without water.

A handful of deaths with nothing to compare them against cannot tell you what caused them. That is an uncomfortable thing to say about people who…

Five minutesMedication and how it works

Looking for a whole subject rather than a single practice? Start from the nine areas.

Feelings and focus

Equanimity and perspective

Being seen and judged

Structure and routine

Feeling from the inside

When you use something to cope

Posture and how you carry yourself

Get started

The cost of avoiding

Getting assessed and diagnosed

Screens and attention

Rest and pacing

Anger, alcohol and the body

Growing empathy

Medical and treatment

Qur’an 49:6

One line of research

No behavioural programme matches what medication does to the core symptoms. It is an uncomfortable sentence for anyone who would rather not medicate, and it is what the trials keep showing.

That does not make the rest of the work pointless, and it does change the order things go in. Where someone is drowning, the fastest reliable help…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 26:80One line of research

Public health messages sometimes say parent training works just as well as medication and carries no side effects. Both halves of that are wrong, and a family who believes it can lose a year.

Parent training is genuinely useful and it is hard work, costing time, money, patience and a good deal of household goodwill. Calling it free of side…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 17:36One line of research

These are among the best studied medicines in psychiatry, in use for decades. Most of the hesitancy around them traces back to how they get covered in the press rather than to the safety record.

Saying that is not the same as saying there is nothing to watch. Heart rate and blood pressure shift a little, appetite and sleep often need…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 49:6One line of research

Medication belongs in ordinary treatment here rather than at the end of the queue. Most people with a clear diagnosis will use it at some point.

Strategies and accommodations do real work while somebody is watching, and they fall away in the settings where nobody is. That is most of adult…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 4:28One line of research

For a family stuck on whether to medicate at all, the comparison with diabetes often unlocks something. Nobody manages diabetes on diet alone, and nobody calls insulin a moral failure.

Offered gently it moves the question from what kind of parent am I towards what does this condition need. Played as a trump card it makes people…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:69One line of research

The stimulants get described as dopamine drugs, and they touch noradrenaline as well. That second effect is what led to medicines aimed at noradrenaline on its own.

Noradrenaline at the front of the brain helps hold a signal steady against background noise, which is a plain description of what working memory…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 20:114One line of research

The alpha-2 medicines work differently again. Picture small ports on the receiving cell that let noise in and let signal leak away, and a medicine that closes them.

Because they act on how clear the signal is rather than on how much transmitter is around, they tend to help most with restlessness, temper and tics,…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 73:20One line of research

The potential for misuse belongs to one of the three families rather than to ADHD medicines generally. The stimulants reach the reward circuitry and the others do not.

That gives a clear answer where there is a substance history in the house, or a worry about tablets going missing at school. Say plainly that a…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 17:35One line of research

Nobody asks whether you believe in insulin. The language of belief has attached itself to ADHD medication, which happens to be among the more heavily tested treatments in medicine, so the useful question is what the testing found.

This is not a way of saying your worries do not count. Side effects, cost, how you feel about giving a child a drug: all of that is real and worth…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:43One line of research

A good response to a stimulant is a piece of information, not a verdict. These drugs sharpen attention in people who do not have ADHD as well, so feeling better on one confirms nothing on its own.

It still counts for something. Set beside a full history it can add weight, particularly where the picture was unclear to begin with. What it cannot…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 49:6One line of research

Wanting to try everything else first is a normal instinct and worth taking seriously. It is still fair to ask why we would have a child squint for a year before trying glasses.

The cost of waiting is not nothing. A school year is a school year, friendships form or fail to, and a child's sense of who they are is being built…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 26:80One line of research

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.

A worry built on a half remembered article tends to dissolve once you find out what was actually studied. A worry that comes from your values, about…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 10:59One line of research

Holding off on treatment can feel like the safe, neutral option. For a child who is struggling now, it is a choice with its own costs rather than an absence of one.

It is completely reasonable to want to try gentler things first, and many of them are worth trying. What is worth resisting is the sense that doing…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 5:87One line of research

A swimming float keeps you at the surface. It does not decide which end of the pool you are heading for, and medication is much the same.

That is a good sentence to have ready before the first prescription. What a drug can hand you is capacity: a little more room to hold your attention,…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:286One line of research

Ask for the actual list. Not some side effects, but the specific ones people commonly get in the first week or two, and roughly when they tend to settle.

A vague warning leaves you reading every ache as a sign that something is going wrong. Being told that an unsettled stomach, loose bowels, headache…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 5:6One line of research

When someone worries that the strength of their tablet might vary a little, the first question is how wide the safe band is for that particular medicine. For most psychiatric drugs the band is generous, and small differences never reach the person at all.

A wide therapeutic window means the gap between too little and too much is large, so ordinary variation gets absorbed on the way. A narrow one means…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 17:35One line of research