The Lens You Use to Observe Your ADHD

ADHD Education

A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, indicates that adults with ADHD might benefit from CBT (also referred to as talk therapy).

The most common treatment for adult ADHD is medications like Adderall and Ritalin. But medication isn’t always enough.


Dr. Steven Safren, the lead author on the study from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston told Reuters Health: “Meds are effective in turning the volume down on symptoms, however usually they don’t do everything.”

A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, indicates that adults with ADHD might benefit from CBT also referred to as talk therapy.

Dr. John Piacentini, a psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles who was not involved in the study, told Reuters Health: “CBT is based on the idea that what we think and how we interpret our environment affects our behavior (and) affects how we act and how we feel.”

The research team led by Dr. Safren divided 86 adults into two groups who had ADHD symptoms that had persisted despite medication.

  • Patients in one group went to sessions for 3 months or 12 individual CBT sessions
  • Patients in the other group focused on relaxation techniques, education about ADHD, and support during 12 scheduled sessions

Two thirds of the first group that participated in the 12 CBT sessions improved during their program and one-third of the second group receiving educational therapy and relaxation techniques improved during the course of their program.

The improvements made in both groups were maintained 9 months after treatment ended.

“That shows that teaching people with ADHD to change their way of thinking and their behavior can help them make real changes in their lives,” Piacentini said.

“The medication only works while you’re taking it,” he explained. “The benefits of CBT are that the patients in the study were learning techniques that they can use lifelong.”

The findings “represent a huge step forward in the psychosocial treatment research for adults with ADHD,” Dr. J. Russell Ramsay, the associate director of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine’s ADHD Treatment and Research Program, told Reuters Health.

To read the entire article go to: 

www.ibtimes.com/contents/20100824/talk-therapy-meds-may-ease-adult-adhd.htm