Fri July 25/2008
Fri July 25/2008 |
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Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) / Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Treatment Programs, MedicationI believe that miracles do happen in the world and they happen all around us but we don’t take notice of that, but they are still happening this moment when you are going through this guide and to your surprise many people are seeing to what no one would even believe even after seeing. It is widely known that ADD is not curable, but I recently saw a program where they showed how two parents spent day and night fighting to get their kid back from the clutches of autism and they finally did when they found out that there was an enzyme, Secretin, which was deficient. They only needed one doctor who could prescribe them Secretin, but they were unable to, and then they convinced the doctors of a university hospital and they started the child on Secretin and he started coming back. He was a normal kid who smiled seeing his parents, responded to when his name was called but then he was lost and he was not responsive, like he was lost. After that when he started showing improvement, Secretin was stopped and then he was starting to get lost in his own world again and then parents found a doctor whose son was going through the same symptoms and they contacted him and then both the children started responding to the treatment and the best thing was that they were communicative and were showing emotional connection with their parents and that was something really huge to achieve. Being updated with the latest research and a comprehensive training and a great deal of patience and HOPE can really bring on miracles to happen. The well-accepted components used in ADD/ADHD treatment strategies are: - Information and education about ADD. Information And Education About AddThe first step in knowing ADD is to collect all the information that you can and make an organized file or folder with all the documents lined up in a systematic way in your drawer. A large pool of information can be collected from books in library, so the best person to help you with that is your librarian who can tell about the most recent books that are being published on ADD. Your librarian can also provide you with the books, videos, cassettes, articles, and any other relevant material that can be pretty helpful to learn more about ADD. You can also get a lot of information from Internet, where there are organizations who have made their websites as well as forums, message boards, you can also find a lot of online educational workshops. Testing And Consultations With Healthcare ProfessionalsWhen you have gone through the first part of knowing the disorder, you are now in a position where you can handle and make plans very effectively. It is when you have not gone through the awareness part that ADD looks like a pretty horrific thing, but through the first step of knowing you are being brought into light as to what it is and what can be done. So now you can contact your local healthcare network and educational advisors and ask to help you find or refer to professionals who can test your child for ADD. If you want to look at other places, you can check into Yellow Pages under listings for: Neurologists, psychiatrists, psychologists. Another thing that you can do is that you can also check in with your local clinics, discussion with your family, children’s pediatricians, your local branch of the Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder (C.H.A.D.D.) group, physician and psychologist referral services, local colleges or universities with medical departments and your favorite online search engine – you can write the keyword "ADHD (large city in your area)" and "ADHD (your state)". National ADHD Directory lists over 600 professionals and is available online via this group: Attention Deficit Disorder Resources Basic listings are free for all. Expanded listings carry annual fee rates. Questions: 1. Can you test for ADHD? If “yes”, would that test be covered with my health insurance and/or do you have sliding scale fees (these are generally based upon income)? If “no”, ask for recommendations / referrals that may be covered or call your insurance company for referrals. 2. Do you see ADD patients as a major specialty? Who would be working with your child and how long he or she has been working on ADD and have there been any success thus far regarding ADD treatment? (Key is to look for someone with successful experience). 3. Briefly describe the testing procedures that your child is going through. 4. Briefly share the history of the current treatments that are working successfully with ADHD - in adults (or “in children” depending upon your need). 5. What type of treatments are available? (The basic thing is to make sure that there are options to personalize what works for your lifestyle, and not a one-size-fits-all approach.) You can ask for their e-mail and pass on the information to them? A. Know the timings and costs of consultation and medications to make sure their options match your schedule and budget. B. Just make sure that if there are medications involved in the treatment process that they have a person who is authorized to prescribe them, as psychologists are not authorized and they may send you to a psychiatrist whom they work under or elsewhere – which means that this will cause you more money, consultation cost etc. – so you need to be sure that your insurance covers this entire process, timing and costs for scheduling and budgeting. Support Network, Groups, Counseling, CoachingThere are a lot of adults with ADD who have been benefited from working under the direction of an ADD coach. A qualified coach can really help them learn behavioral and coping management skills and put all of them into practice to improve their daily functions, like improving organizational skills and productivity. Medication for ADD/ADHDThe medicines that are prescribed by physicians to help stabilize brain activity and to bring it to a normal level are stimulants. These medicines are the same for both the adults and children. The names of the medications are as follows: Adderall, Ritalin and Dexedrine. Cylert and Desoxyn are two other medicines that are being prescribed for ADD. Ritalin is the most popular medicine prescribed for ADHD that has been prescribed for over 40 years. The researchers say that Ritalin when taken in correct dosages helps the most and they are seen to largely have decreased the ADHD behaviors. The role as to how these stimulants bring about changes in ADHD individuals is still not known, but it definitely leads to major improvements in the lives of individuals going through ADD. The problems that arise in the process of prescribing the medications are extra paperwork for the healthcare professionals, restricted supply, which is of one month because of the prescription regulations, licensing issues with regards to people seeking these just to get controlled substances for other (unethical) reasons. Individuals going through ADHD report feeling “calm” when taking these medications instead of feeling "high" (like an addict trying to gain a prescription would desire). And adults with ADD who have history of substance abuse often report an end in their desire for abusive substances when they are medicated for ADHD. According to the research another class of drugs known as antidepressants may also be helpful for the management of several ADD symptoms if the stimulant medications are not effective. The most popular antidepressants are Desipramine, Effexor, Imipramine, Nortriptyline and Wellbutrin. If these drugs are non-effective, then other drugs from anti-depressant category may be tried or the above mentioned anti-depressants can also be tried at different dosing and combination, which depends on the individual’s current clinical standing. The side effects that occur due to these drugs are: Getting the “jitters,” headaches or stomachaches (Pepto-Bismol or Zantac is often recommended for stomachaches). Behavioral Coping Skills DevelopmentBehavioral and cognitive therapy has also been found to help modify the behaviors of ADD individuals. It helps them to manage the emotional effects of their disorder. There are four important issues involved in behavior modification programs: 1. Start with goals that the person can achieve in small steps. 2. Be as consistent as possible— with times of the day, days of the week, environment and associated people. 3. Implement behavioral modifications all along the way, long-term. i.e. don’t wait until the end to introduce everything. 4. Take learning the new skills’ process a little each day, one day at a time. You can always refer to the ADD resources for helping you learn and incorporate new behavioral skills. There are a variety of treatment programs such as workshops, classroom instructions to videos and CDs and more. You can check as to what suits you the best and what is that comes in your affordability plan. Educational / Career Counseling & Coping SkillsStudies suggest that counseling the individuals going through ADD along with incorporating coping skills in them have been known as essential adjuncts along with the therapies mentioned above, as this greatly enhances their quality of life. The basic issues that people with ADD go with are as follows: Distractions – Distractions occur from both boredom and over-stimulation and both of these can be important challenging issues in the workplace. Boredom can cause distracted thoughts, daydreaming – which leads to loss of time and work production. Over-stimulation can lead to hyper-alert mode, which results in overactive imagination and distractive thoughts, which in turn result in lack of focus and attention that is required at the job place. Some tips to handle boredom include: Divide the tasks into smaller more manageable chunks, take short breaks and ask for more challenging work etc. Some tips to handle over-stimulation include: Don’t do multiple things at one time, do one thing at a time; try e-mails as a ways to communicate to avoid lengthy discussions on things so as to prevent distraction from the assigned tasks, write down the thoughts and ideas on a journal that can be sorted out and thought upon some other time. If there is distraction in terms of noise, it would be good that you see a manager, a teacher or the concerned authority that can help you with that issue, so that issue can be resolved to achieve a working environment where you can focus at best. Impulsive & Hyperactive Behaviors – In order to deal with this, the best way is to not have lengthy sessions where the adult or child going through ADD does not have to sit for lengthy times. In case if the job requirement is that one has to sit for lengthy time spans, then one can always set a time when a break can be taken for a few minutes so as to prevent the feeling of hyperactivity to grow that could lead to distractions at work. One can utilize the break time by having a cup of coffee, walk to the reading rooms, walk for sometime in the lawn seeing flowers and enjoying the sights and sounds. In order to analyze as to what are the thoughts that cause you to being hyperactive, just note them down and then think on them when you are calm as to what cause you to be so impulsive at times and you can also get in touch with your ADD team who is helping you through all this so the reasons can be found and better ways of managing it all can be worked out so as to achieve the best possible solutions to handle those situations, which cause impulsivity to build up inside. Time, Memory and Organizational Management – These are the most important things to live a healthy life, time, memory and organizational management. In order to put everything in order, you need to have a grab on time, which means that you must have everything lined up in the form of to do list with deadlines the night before so that your entire day is planned for you and you know what to do when, which will prevent any anxiety to build up inside. You can just plan it right from when you will be getting up to start your day, when you will be leaving for work, how you will be managing the workload for that day, and when you will be finishing the work, the group meeting sessions, the times when you need to go through the tests etc. Rather than remembering all, just note them down on a notebook and keep it with you, which will keep you aligned for the entire day and make your life all disciplined. Managing Long-Term Projects – When you are assigned lengthy projects, don’t get panicked, just remember that everything is under your control and you can manage to what tasks are being assigned to you and you can do it all, just remember the hum of the words, I Can, I Will, and believe me that you can, it’s just that you have to keep your nerves under your control to get that done. The best thing of all is that you just get in touch with your manager or teacher to ask them to help you as to how you can break this project into smaller goals so the whole project can be achieved with great ease. You can also ask for some people to be teamed up with you for assistance so that you have less burden of work and can focus on things that need to be done by you. Problems with Co-workers, Clients or Students – This is something that we all go through in our daily lives where we have problems with interpersonal communication, where we find it difficult to keep our relationships stable with our co-workers, clients or students. There are many ways to work on these problems, just note down as to the nature of the conflict that arose and go through it in your leisure time and think what was the cause of the conflict, how it started, and you will see how it started, see all of that scenario as a third person seeing that and not you. Other things that can be really helpful are information from the websites, articles as to how to handle the situations when one is in conflict with people, there are also books that are available such as How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, which is a recommended book and gives a detailed insight on handling such situations. You can also talk with the counselors at work and explain them all in detail and get their opinion on the entire situation to get their understanding and analysis to understand better the mistakes at your end. Dedication, Persistence And Elbow GreaseThese are the essence of taking you through all the times when you are feeling down and will help you achieve the targets and goals that you have set for yourself. Dedication, persistence and hard work will help you achieve all in your life that you want to. There are a few tips that I would like to share. The thing that comes first is to take care of the health. It is the biggest asset that one can have and taking care of it will help you focus more on the goals that you have set for to achieve. To achieve good health, you need to eat right, exercise 30 minutes a day, have good rest, avoid unhealthy habits like drinking, smoking, being around people who are negative. You are your best friend and you can just guide yourself through the right path to grab all achievements. The thing that comes next is that you just keep on continue your education process and don’t let any breaks to come in between. Continue to read books, articles, participate in forums, message boards and spread the words that are focused to help others. Participate in organizational events in your industry; attend a class or workshop series once a year. You just need to take all the things in your life as a challenge and keep yourself positive throughout the way and not let negativity come near to you. You can get inspiration from people who went through some real tough times in their lives but they kept on holding themselves inside them and they survived. Remember, you are the one who is going to survive. Plan to succeed. It is always best to plan things before hand and to make goals to achieve, as the feeling of achievement just boosts the morals and motivates one being on the track of achievements. There is a book named “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey, which is really a very good source of learning. Another most important aspect, which really helps one to keep motivated and stay on the track of achievements is to stay around people who have a positive approach in life and who learn and share their learning with other people, because if you are surrounded by people who are not positive, they will drag you down and will instill thoughts that would de-track you from your goals and would make you think towards negative things, which would be very detrimental and would pull you down the steps that you have climbed and would take you a whole lot time to gain them back. These people who are negative are very much absorbed and self-centered and they cannot feel other people’s feelings, so it is always good to keep a better distance from them. There is a song, which says, “When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.” Available Educational Or Workplace AssistanceADHD is recognized as a disability. There can be appropriate accommodations that at times can be made in the classroom for children with ADHD, and in the workplace for adults with ADHD, because of federal legislation; the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans With Disabilities Act, and the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. These accommodations result in a great quality of life, which directly results in improved work efficiency and productivity. You need to know in detail about the opportunities that may be available to you and apply them practically. Understand it fully and it use to the maximum for your benefit. |
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