"I dread the thought of my child being dependent on ADHD medication." Hi, it's Dr. James Wiley with Focus MD. Another thing that parents worry about stimulant medication is that they dread that their child could become dependent on it. And it says right in the package insert of many of the medications that dependence is possible, and that's a long way from saying that it occurs. In our experience, and in the experience of other ADHD providers, kids don't become dependent on the medication in the way that you would think a drug addict who is dependent on his or her addiction. The medication works much more like insulin. When it's in the system, it's effective, and when it wears off, it's not effective and the symptoms come back. So in that sense, the child is dependent on the… Read More »

"I’m scared of tics and not the creepy crawly kind; the ADHD medication kind." Another concern that parents have with ADHD medication is that they've heard that they can cause tics, and I'm not talking about the creepy, crawly kind, I'm talking about the facial and muscle twitches and spasms, like blinking or mouth deviation, sometimes head turning, those sorts of motor tics, and sometimes these are associated with verbal tics like sniffing, or throat clearing, or even vocalizations. This is a more unusual side effect of stimulant medication, but stimulants can make these worse, and they can also bring them out of nowhere. Again, it's usually dose and drug dependent, so it will go away with the change in dose and change in medication very often. There are a lot of other things that cause tics as well besides stimulants. The number one thing is stress, and we… Read More »

"ADHD medications keep me up at night." Parents often worry about ADHD medication causing problems with sleep, and very often this will keep parents from giving enough ADHD medicine to adequately treat the symptoms, because they're afraid if they go up on the medicine, sleep problems will get worse. ADHD in itself will often cause sleep problems because the ADHD brain has a really hard time of shutting itself down. So be aware that it may not be the medication but actually the ADHD symptoms coming back when the ADHD medication wear off. There are several tricks for getting patients with ADHD to sleep better and these include using white noise, some sort of fan sort of noise, staying away from screen time, or LCD lighting for 30 minutes to 60 minutes before going to bed, avoiding caffeine afternoon, and… Read More »

"I’m more scared by ADHD medication than ADHD itself." Hi it's Dr. James Wiley with Focus-MD. ADHD is much scarier than stimulant medication. Parents need to be aware that untreated ADHD has its side effects too. The most important of these of course is poor performance in school, but there are many others. Untreated ADHD makes it twice as likely that a child will be retained in a grade or fail a grade, and it also has significant impact in terms of the child's development of executive function. In addition to these school based problems kids with ADHD are more likely to have accidents. Teens that are driving with ADHD are three times more likely to have an accident and five times more likely to get a moving violation, such as reckless driving, speeding or failure to yield at a… Read More »

"Worrying about the heart side effects of ADHD medication gives me palpitations." Dr. Wiley agrees with Dr. Scott's explanation of how EKG's are not needed for children who are starting to use ADHD medication. Dr. Wiley says in addition to this pediatric cardiologist's reassuring advice there was recently a huge study (1,000,000 charts and 3.5 million patient years) that found no long term heart problems with stimulants. Remember to tell your physician if the patient has a cardiac condition or there is a strong family history of heart disease/stroke/hypertension especially in family members under the age of 40 just to be even safer. In this video, William A. Scott, MD FHRS FACC FAAP, gives parents some the advice that, "Consequently large organizations such as American College of Cardiology and the American Academy of Pediatrics have come out with consensus recommendations where… Read More »