Interventions

            First and most common there are pharmacological interventions. Those include the prescription of stimulant medication such as Ritalin and Adderall. Medication has been proven effective for improving attention, concentration, and motivation. However, there is no evidence to support improvement on academic performance or learning. Medication is also seen as a barrier, or at the very least a delay, in the seeking of non-pharmacological interventions like the ones I will explain next.

Next there are behavioral interventions. Reinforcement and punishment are the staples of this type of treatment. There are 3 main types of behavioral interventions- positive reinforcement, punishment, and response cost. Combining behavior management techniques with the stimulant medication can be more effective than pharmacological treatments on their own.

Cognitive-behavioral treatments are also proven effective to treat ADHD. Therapists teach the children self-talk, self-instruction, self-monitoring, and self-reinforcement techniques to control their attention and impulse behavior problems. These have the best results when they include specific training that matches the desired performance as closely as possibly. This can be done in a classroom setting, but it’s not as effective as clinical CBT. The effects of this kind of intervention have not been shown to generalized to times and setting when the intervention is absent.

The next type of intervention is for the parents of the children who are suffering from ADHD. These consist of training programs that help the parents to develop effective skills that manage their child’s undesirable behaviors. Their desired outcome is increased child compliance with improvements in parenting skills. However, this type of intervention does not tend to work in dysfunctional families.

Educational interventions consist of classroom management plans that help to organize a classroom in a way that make it the most productive. Some examples of management plans are reducing noise levels, a formal structure, seating ADHD children in the front seats, and taking breaks between assignments. Even though these strategies are useful for improving ADHD-related behaviors, they haven’t been helpful in improving academic performances.

Lastly, there are multimodal interventions. These consist of any combination of the other treatment options I have already described. The outcomes are likely to be better when combined than when used in isolation. But there have been studies that prove that some combinations of treatments are not as effective as medication alone.