ADHD Medications: Your Medical Team

Parker, CorePsych At CHADD
October 25, 2011
ADHD Medications: Interview Attention Talk Radio
November 3, 2011

Choosing Your ADHD Medical Team – Think Of Consequences    

Dopamine Pathways. In the brain, dopamine play...

Dopamine Paths via Wikipedia

At CorePsych Blog we've been talking about your ADHD medical team for some time now, and added a whole chapter on the importance of your medical team on my new book, the only one written for the public on ADHD meds: ADHD Medication Rules – Paying Attention To The Meds For Paying Attention.

Check Out Attention Talk Radio

Jeff Copper has asked me to join him on Attention Talk Radio [Call in Number and Details here] 8 PM EDT tomorrow night, Wednesday Nov 2, to talk about this very hot topic. Some highlights that will be spelled out are here just below – first here are some easy notes for your reference/download:

The 5 Key Questions To Select Your ADHD Medical Professional [pdf download]

The list is here:

Five Key Questions – To Select an ADHD Medical Professional

  1. Are they interested in ADHD as an entity, or do they think it’s a joke and recoil when you ask if they know about it? If they are not interested you need someone who is, ask around the community, go to a CHADD meeting, look on the internet for those who indicate it’s a specialty!
  2. Do they talk to your children about specific issues or rely in haste on the parents input only? This common problem causes more treatment failures in adolescence and adult life than any single factor. Engagement is absolutely necessary for informed medical intervention – vs hearsay.
  3. Do they recommend through serious misinformation the medication be taken only for school? Everyone knows that the prefrontal cortex works 24×7 while awake, and that the symptoms associated with ineffective thinking and follow through spell trouble for a lifetime of weekends. Family is important.
  4. Do they fret from misinformation that the medication is likely to cause addiction? Studies show that not taking medication for ADHD issues often spells specific liability for substance abuse. New findings to soon be reported on CorePsych Blog detail the genetic changes that create relative dopamine imbalances with modification of dopamine receptor sites, and also in measurable dopamine neurotransmitter levels that feed addiction patterns: weight, sex, cocaine, heroin, alcohol – does that get your attention!?
  5. Do they treat only by superficial appearances, or use misinformed cookie-cutter medication dosage strategies? Ouch! You’ve heard of R2D2? Think of evolved medical intervention like this ->

R2D2 😕

R – Review the History in detail – Context Matters – more details on the radio program  [available on file if you missed it!]
R – Review the Biomedical details – the body and mind are connected, meds have to first travel through the body
D – Diagnosis: Function not appearances, causes not labels
D – Dosage Precision: Specific for each person, each medication, and each visit.

Details Always Matter

The bottom line: capricious use of stimulant meds is out, new brain science is in… tune in for 1 hr of details!

cp

3 Comments

  1. […] ADHD Medications: Your Medical Team (corepsychblog.com) […]

  2. Matt says:

    Dr Parker, before I showed up at your office in Vienna (when you had an office in Vienna!), I did what you mentioned — search for psychiatrists on the internet who claimed to have a specialty in ADHD. That was a disaster.  As you’ve said before, the psychiatric community does not help many of us very much, unless y’all can embrace a ‘comprehensive neuroscientific view’.  Everything is not perfect now for me with Vyvanse, but it is better than its ever been.

    • Matt,
      Happy it’s working a bit, don’t hesitate to set up a phone chat if we can help on follow up – there on the Services page at the nav bar, thanks!
      cp