So much shaming on the ADHD side continues, even within the medical community, who often don’t get it, simply because the diagnosis is so limiting, so often ineffective, and so difficult to objectify. Even the psychologists frequently miss the target – and when they miss it, lifetimes can be lost completely.

My most frequent office observation: Negative feelings about ADHD arise because medications and med management remains so often imprecise. The public and other professionals simply don’t think we know what we are doing. And they are right. Dosing strategies remain obscure, objectives seem ephemeral, and the diagnosis itself is based almost entirely on description, not function.

The new treatment imperative: people, not symptoms.

To make matters worse, well informed practitioners recommend using counterproductive, known drug interactions to adjust dosage of commonly used stimulant meds. This is completely unacceptable, and typifies the overt disregard for peer reviewed science in ADHD treatment.

Here, in the contemporary context of abundant new discoveries with brain and body science, we are still treating the tip of the iceberg rather than looking underwater to truly see biologically what is floating the berg. Intelligent, well informed practitioners look at superficial measures, skip the details, and still attempt to use parameters such as body weight to adjust dosage. Practice really should catch up with science, and the basics of liver metabolism.

Well Bryan, I am glad we are on the same soapbox, – I appreciate your observations, and will soon add to the discussion with my own new book, so will give this comment a rest.

I appreciate the opportunity to work with you and wish you the best with your new book project,

HNY,
Chuck