How myADHD.com Can Help Your Practice and You
by Harvey C. Parker, Ph.D., and the myADHD.com Team

Getting the Most Out of myADHD.com
Since the inception of www.myADHD.com a little over three years ago we have had an enormously enthusiastic response to the tools on the site. The myADHD.com team wanted to use this issue of the newsletter to explain how subscribers are using these tools so that you would be able to get the most out of your myADHD.com subscription.

Using The Subscriber Administration Page
The Subscriber Administration Page is the main control center for sending and viewing myADHD.com assessment and tracking tools (see a sample ). It is an important tool and it is unique to myADHD.com.

Every subscriber has a private myADHD.com account containing rating scales that can be sent electronically to others for completion and viewed once completed. When subscribers login they are immediately taken to their personal Subscriber Administration Page. From there they can send scales to others, view completed scales, and keep an address book of important contact information (emails, phone #'s, etc). This makes sending and receiving form data very easy. There are over a dozen forms that can be sent, many in both English and Spanish.

For example, if you want to send a link for a Vanderbilt Assessment Scale to a middle school student's five teachers all you have to do is make an address record for the student in the contact book, add all the teacher's email addresses, and select the Vanderbilt Assessment Form (Teacher Version) from the scroll down menu. With one click of the mouse you have sent each teacher a Vanderbilt form to be completed online. When they complete the form you get an email stating you have received a completed form for viewing. All completed forms remain in your account and can be accessed through your Subscriber Administration Page.

The Subscriber Administration Page can save health care professionals both time and money. Rather than sending costly paper forms through the mail or having families pick them up at your office, the myADHD.com forms can be transmitted electronically with unlimited frequency in seconds. Recipients of these forms (teachers and family members) enjoy completing them online. You get the information you need quickly to make decisions.

Parents or adults like the Subscriber Administration Page as well. A parent subscriber, for example, can send the Weekly Monitoring Form to their child's teacher electronically. Once received the parent can send an email to their child's health care professional to view the completed form to see the student's progress.

Treatment Tools
The page containing myADHD.com Treatment Tools is the most highly visited page on the site. There are over 125 worksheets designed to help children, adolescents, and adults. Everyone of them can be printed and used by therapists, parents, educators, or adults with ADHD.

The myADHD.com Team has focused on developing practical treatment tools to help children and adolescents in the following key areas:
• behavior management
• study strategies (organization, reading, note taking, attending, etc)
• anger management
• scheduling and organizing time and things
• cognitive behavior change
• career planning
• tracking medication effects
• understanding learning differences

For example, a parent, teacher or counselor working with a child with ADHD can choose from nearly three dozen behavior charts to use with the child or teen at home or at school. Select a colorful chart, print it, and use it as often as you like. If you need a Daily Report Card there are several to choose from for children of different ages and for different target behaviors. Need a Home Token Economy Program? We have one complete with a detailed manual on how to set it up. Deciding about medication? Use one of our worksheets to help you think it through.

Library Tools
myADHD.com Library Tools are available to subscribers and non-subscribers who are interested in learning about ADHD resources, links to scientific articles, and support organizations. These tools are continuously updated to provide current information about ADHD across the lifespan.

So there you have it. A quick tour of myADHD.com. Sign up and join thousands of other health professionals, parents, and adults with ADHD who have found our tools very helpful.

Reprinted with permission of Journal of Attention Disorders, this column contains abstracts of recent research studies provided by Sam Goldstein, Ph.D., University of Utah Medical School and editor of the Journal of Attention Disorders.

Todd, R.D., Huang, H., Smalley, S., Willcutt, E.G., Pennington, B.F., Smith, S.D., Faraone, S.V., & Neuman, R.J. (2005). Collaborative analysis of DRD4 and DAT genotypes in population defined ADHD subtypes. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 46, 1067-1073.

These authors re-analyzed data from three separate studies on the genetics of ADHD using population based subtypes. For the genes of interest, DRD4 and DAT polymorphisms no associations were found based on DSM-IV subtypes. However, the population based, severe, combined ADHD group was significantly related to an over-representation of the 440 base pair 3-DAT VNTR polymorphism. Of those classified as DSM-IV combined type, 74.5% fell into the severe-combined population-based group. Relationship was also detected between this group and an over-representation of the 7 repeat DRD4 allele. This relationship did not reach statistical significance. The authors concluded that this result supports the role of the dopaminergic system in ADHD suggesting that previous inconsistent results of molecular genetic studies may be related to diagnostic heterogeneity in the use of DSM-IV criteria. Population based subtypes determined by latent class analysis again defined groups of clinically homogeneous individuals who may be more likely to show etiological mechanisms. Population based methods could add more power to studies of ADHD treatments in addition to those involving genetics.

Weckerly, J., Gregory, A., Laurel, L., Garland, A.F., Lansverk, J., & Richard, H. (2005). Attention on inattention: The differential effect of caregiver education on endorsement of ADHD symptoms. Developmental and behavioral pediatrics, 26, 201-208.

In this survey of 137 caregivers, the ADHD Module of the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children IV was completed. Statistical analyses demonstrated significantly low rates of inattentive symptom endorsement by caregivers with less education. No education related differences, however, were observed for hyperactive/impulsive symptoms. These results were stable when other demographic factors such as caregiver race, youth age and gender were controlled. The authors speculate that although prevalence of ADHD is reported to be higher in lower SES groups since inattentive symptoms are less easily observed than hyperactive/impulsive symptoms, caregivers may be more susceptible to missing these symptoms. A number of hypotheses additionally were offered to explain this finding. The findings, however, emphasized that an informal assessment of parents’ understanding of inattentive symptoms may improve the accuracy of an ADHD assessment. These findings highlight the role of informant characteristics on child behavior ratings in the process of evaluation.

This month's tool is a slide show on ADHD called What is ADHD? This slide show can be shown to families and educators to provide an overview of characteristics, causes, and treatments for ADHD. It can serve as an excellent brief introduction and lay the groundwork for future treatment.

myADHD.com and Addvisors.com offer a free ADHD related teleconference on the second Wednesday of each month.

ADHD in Girls featuring Pat Quinn, MD

Wednesday, March 14, 2007 from 8:30 - 9:30 pm

Call: (646) 519-5883 Pin: 2648 at 8:30 pm EST on March 14th to join the teleconference.