@psychgeist52
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Another large study finds ADHD meds don't improve school performance, at least for kids on the margin of treatment.
I remain unsure what ADHD is. I was taught it was a delay in maturation that resolved. Later, a lifelong disorder of attention. More recently, a problem of alertness and reward pathways more than attention.
Either way, parents and teachers often push medication hoping to improve grades.
This study looked at all children aged 5 to 15 in Norway. It used differences in how clinics prescribe as a natural experiment. Using this analysis academic benefits of medication disappeared.
"For children and adolescents on the margin of pharmacological treatment for ADHD, we found no causal effect of pharmacological treatment on any of our measures of academic performance."
DOI: 10.1192/bjp.2026.10754
Picture: Figure 2(b) showing that GPA doesn’t significantly increase with meds using the instrumental variable analysis.View quoted post on X
thecritic.co.uk Selling self-diagnosis | Dr Naomi Fisher | The Critic Magazine Direct-to-consumer marketing is widening the boundaries of autism and ADHD, and the NHS is picking up the bill Psychiatry would be better off if we stuck with DSM-III because each change leads to massive overdiagnosis.View quoted post on X
When we finished DSM-IV, I
was proud we had made so few changes- but those we did make (in Autism, ADHD, Bipolar) all led to harmful fads.
DSM-5 was a disaster of dumb changes & there's absolutely no excuse for a DSM-6.
