Dr. Russell Barkley

But, you know, sophisticated clinicians will think that through and say, you know, given your portrait of your disorder, as well as your other disorders, let's remember that 80% of people with ADHD or more have a second disorder.

50% have

Two more disorders.

So we're really dealing with disorder combinations here, and very rarely are we dealing with ADHD alone.

It's about one out of every seven cases is a pure ADHD case.

So to me, the real clinical work here is in how many disorders do you have?

How do they affect my treatment planning?

What drugs should I be using given your constellation of issues and urgency?

Are you a college student living away from home?

Well, one in four of those kids diverts the medication.

Maybe I'm not going to send Adderall or Vyvanse into that environment just yet until we see how responsible you are with a Schedule II stimulant.

You know, it's just thinking it through and knowing where your prescription's going and who's using it and who's around you.

and how responsible you can be, et cetera, et cetera.

So there's a lot of complexity to walk through, but many clinicians simply go trial and error.

I'll start with this one.

If that doesn't work, I'll go to the next one, then the next one.

And eventually, about 93% of the time, we find a drug that works for you, but not always.

Oh, my God.

I mean, let's understand, about 8% to 10%, the drugs don't help them at all, or they have adverse reactions that we have to stop.

But for the remaining 90%, what we find is that, now get this, 55% are completely normalized on the medication.