From the New York Times, BBC:

The drugs most widely used to manage aggressive outbursts in intellectually disabled people are no more effective than dummy pills for most patients and may be less so, researchers are reporting.

The finding, being published Friday in the journal Lancet, sharply challenges standard medical practice in mental health clinics and nursing homes in the United States and around the world.

(more…)

Maybe ADD explains dad’s behavior

From the New York Times:

AS more youngsters than ever receive diagnoses of disorders — the number has tripled since the early 1990s, to more than six million — many parents have come to recognize that their own behavior is symptomatic of those disorders, sometimes in a major, but more commonly, in a minor way. In effect, the diagnosis may spread from the child to other family members, forcing each to confront family frustrations and idiosyncrasies that they might prefer to have left unacknowledged.

… diagnosing an adult through his or her child has its risks, psychiatrists say. (more…)

From the Denver Post, a feature on College Living Experience. The for-profit program is helping 47 Denver area students with autism and attention deficit learn how to go to college. See earlier stories about this program’s operations in Chicago and the Washington, D.C. area. All told, the company claims to serve some 7,800 students in 16 states.

From the Associated Press and Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Every hour per day that kids under 3 watched violent entertainment their risk doubled for attention problems five years later, says a study published in the journal Pediatrics. The study, by University of Washington researchers, did not find attention problems associated with educational programs like “Arthur” and “Blue’s Clues”.

Previous research and news reports on TV’s effects have tended to view television as a single entity, without regard to content. But “the reality is that it’s not inherently good or bad. It really depends on what they watch,” said Dr. Dimitri Christakis, who co-authored the study.

From Reuters (UK):

Teenagers who have survived childhood cancer are 50 percent more likely to be depressed or anxious than their siblings and 70 percent more likely to show antisocial behaviors or attention deficits, according to a report by Emory University researchers in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Certain cancer treatments were particularly associated with these problems, including brain radiation and spinal injections of the cancer drug methotrexate. These therapies directly affect the functioning of the central nervous system and are known to be linked to neurological and psychological problems.

We think it’s the first of its kind in the Chicago area: a post-secondary program for students with learning and emotional disabilities. It’s called College Living Experience, and it has eleven students and a tuition that hovers around $33,000 annually. (With other expenses, that brings the tab to more than a year at Harvard.) Parents, faced with a bleak educational landscape for their students, view the cost as an investment in their students’ future.

Nationally, only about 13 percent of young people with these “invisible” disabilities attend college, according to the U.S. Department of Education. (In another era, they dropped out of high school and headed to factories, steel mills and other well-paying blue-collar jobs that have all but vanished from America’s landscape).

… In a way, they are pioneers because there is little data on outcomes. But as more researchers zero in on diagnosis and treatment of these impairments, there is growing awareness these young people desperately need post-secondary options that will lead to jobs and independence.

From the Chicago Tribune.

See earlier stories here and here.

Also, see www.thinkcollege.net for a full listing of post-secondary opportunities for students with intellectual disabilities.

The practice of giving students with learning disabilities more time to take their tests has become so common at top private schools in New York City and across the country that it carries nearly no stigma, the New York Sun reports.

Disability rights activists describe the trend as an important victory for students with difficulties such as dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, but a small number of students are waging a battle against the accommodations, a struggle that could intensify when the SAT season begins again this fall. Their target audience: college admissions officers, who they say risk being hoodwinked into admitting students with artificially impeccable transcripts.