Dr. Laura Knauss

But those don't work for everyone.

What are some of the other ways ADHD is treated?

Yeah, first of all, I think people do not need to feel that if a medication is not the right choice for them, that it's some sort of moral imperative, right?

I'm like, whatever tool in the toolbox, you know.

There are non-stimulant classes of medication, so Stratera, which is a brand name, Adamoxetine,

From the research overall, they don't tend to be as effective as the stimulants.

And they have a different side effect profile, though.

So the other thing is everybody's brain is, like, a little bit different.

And so it would be so nice if we could just say, like, well, everyone is going to respond to this drug.

But, like, if the caller doesn't like how a stimulant makes them feel, that's totally fine.

And they totally should talk to their doctor about, you know, trying some of these alternatives.

Therapy specifically for ADHD works best when it is really tailored to the problems that people with ADHD face.

So where we really see like the big effects or the larger effects right now for adult ADHD is these treatments like CBT for adult ADHD, where you're working on skills that address the inattentive symptoms, the impulsive symptoms and that sort of thing.

In the more kind of biological therapy space, there is some exciting stuff going on with something called transcranial magnetic stimulation.

So this is, and I'm not an expert on it by any means, but it's a way of kind of stimulating the brain in certain ways that is showing some signs of being able to relieve symptoms, you know, at least for some limited periods of time.

And finally, I guess I would say there's a lot of exciting things, but they're always with this disorder have been a ton of unproven or disproven treatments out there.

So I just encourage kind of buyer beware.

I am on the professional advisory board for an organization called CHAD, Children and Adults with ADHD.

And I would just encourage listeners to go to CHAD's website and the National Resource Center for ADHD if they have a question about like, what's the evidence for this kind of treatment?

Has the profile of who we think of as a person with ADHD changed over time?