From the Contra Costa Times:

Blake Taylor’s new memoir — one of the first penned by a youth with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder — offers a fascinating and ultimately hopeful glimpse into the childhood challenges shared by 4 million other young Americans.

“I want to change the view that ADHD doesn’t exist or that it’s solely a disability,” says Blake. “It’s a gift.”

The book, called “ADHD & Me: What I Learned From Lighting Fires at the Dinner Table,” arose out of Taylor’s college admissions essay. He is a freshman at the University of California, Berkeley.

Accompanying the story are tips for teens on managing ADHD, as well as a reading list.

Earlier post here.

From the [UK] Times:

British exam regulators report a 43 percent increase in the number of students who were given extra time or extra help to complete standardized tests, sparking allegations of affluent parents exploiting the system to benefit their children.

A number of experts agreed yesterday that the rules were open to abuse. Tom Burkard, a research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies and director of the Promethean Trust, a charity for dyslexic children, said that many middle-class parents were exploiting the system to gain an unfair advantage for their children.

“Schools are under great pressure not to give students extra time in exams. When they do, it’s usually the result of pressure from middle-class parents,” he said.

Children with ADHD feel different, but can be comforted and supported by caring teachers and parents, says a new report in the Journal of Pediatric Nursing. The report is based on numerous interviews with students, and includes such sections as “I missed a lot,” “I was misunderstood,” and “I learned how to manage.” Excerpts in the New York Times.

From the Los Angeles Times:

A new series of studies of children in Finland and the United States raises provocative questions about the benefits of medicating children with ADHD. Among the findings: by the time they’re in their late teens, people who received drugs for attention problems seem to fare about the same as those who do not.

The study also found that a child’s likelihood of having adult ADHD is significantly greater if they have a parent — especially a father — who also has attention problems.

Study co-author Susan L. Smalley, a neuropsychologist from UCLA, said the studies show that ADHD is “an extreme on the continuum” for humans, and that people with ADHD may have compensating strengths.

If better medication or specialized therapy, or both, can drive down the risks that these children will be hobbled by academic failure, ill-chosen impulses and other psychiatric problems, their other talents could shine through, Smalley said. And the world would be a better place for it, she added.

“We need to step back and embrace neurodiversity, diversity in human behavior and try to work on ways to embrace and enhance being at the extreme, instead of only focusing on the deficits and disorder aspects of ADHD,” Smalley said.

From the Associated Press, New York Times, USA Today and elsewhere:

A congressional committee investigating doping in baseball was told yesterday that ADD and ADHD have increased sharply among major league players — whose diagnoses make them eligible to use otherwise banned amphetamines.

The number of major leaguers claiming therapeutic use exemptions for adult ADD has mushroomed to 103 this past season from 28 in 2006, the year that the stimulants were banned.

Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) charged that players are using ADD claims to evade the amphetamine ban and use use stimulants like Ritalin and Adderal. He said the players are using these drugs at a rate that is eight times that of the general population.

“This demands an explanation. There’s something fundamentally wrong them going from 28 to 103,” said Dr. Gary Wadler, chairman of the committee that determines the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned-substances list. “If we had this percentage increase in the general population, it would be on the evening news as a national epidemic. It’s an outrageous number.”

From the New York Times and the Washington Post:

The Child Study Center at New York University said on Wednesday that it would halt an advertising campaign aimed at raising awareness of children’s mental and neurological disorders after the effort drew a strongly negative reaction.The two-week-old campaign, created pro bono by the advertising agency BBDO, used the device of ransom notes to deliver ominous messages concerning disorders like autism, depression, bulimia and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.Advocates for children with autism and for other special-needs children said the ads reinforced negative stereotypes.

Earlier post here.

From the New York Daily News and the New York Times:

The NYU Child Study Center has launched an ad campaign that features “ransom notes” warning of the dangers of disorders like autism, ADHD, Asperger’s syndrome, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The notes are prompting outrage and demands for removal among many of the groups they are designed to represent.

Officials at NYU say the ads are not intended to offend, but rather to call attention to the lack of treatment for the disorders. Parents and disability advocates say the ads reinforce stereotypes, stigmatize people who have the disorders, and make the disorders themselves seem somehow criminal.

Protests have been launched by (more…)