ADHD Treatment Options

When most people think about the treatment of ADHD, they only contemplate one option: drugs. In reality, however, there are quite a few different ADHD treatment options available if you know where to look.

Although some people do best with Ritalin or Dexedrine, while others need counseling on how to organize and schedule their lives, most ADHD patients actually do best with a combination of approaches. When I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder as a teenager, my parents did not hesitate at all before putting me on the meds.

After all, back then it was just the thing to do. The problem was that I did not really like my Ritalin. When I was on it, I always felt kind of a bit stoned. When I was off of it, I felt really scattered. If anything, I was in a worse place than before I began the medication.

My parents quickly realized that they would have to look into other ADHD treatment options. They told me to stay on the medicine in the mean time, but they took me in to see a counselor to find out what else could be done.

The counselor was actually a doctor of juvenile medicine who was skilled at treating ADHD, learning disabilities, and other mental development issues. He proposed a novel technique called biofeedback. Although it is now a routine part of most ADD treatments nowadays, at the time biofeedback was a pioneering technique.

Basically, I would be set up at a laptop computer with a compact disc of my choosing inside. When my brain was acting in a certain way characteristic of concentration, the music would turn on. When my brain stopped acting in that way, the music would turn off again. Over weeks of treatment, I slowly but surely learned how to control the machine using only the action of my own brain.

Nowadays, this is becoming one of the best and most popular ADHD treatment options out there. For many people, it is not enough alone, but it definitely does help. For many people, ADHD treatment options like this allow them to use little or no ADD medicine.

It allowed me to take a much lower dose of Ritalin, while concentrating much more fully than ever before. My grades went way up, I was happier, and I even had more free time (since I was getting all of my work done.) All in all, I would say that it was a very effective course of treatment.