It's back to school time! Here are some questions that parents might want to ask the school to try to optimize the management of a child with ADHD:

1. What strategies does this school have for assessing, and meeting, the needs of an ADHD child?

2. Who are the people that provide actual evaluations or assessments of children at your school? If they are making an assessment of my child, will they contact me to get a good family history, developmental history, and medical history of my child?

3. Is there a school psychologist on campus? Is there one available? Does he/she do achievement and ability testing?

4. Is there an advocate or case manager available to my child?

Several important and controversial studies have been published in the past few months on ADHD, making the summer research reading all the more fun. Here are summaries of two summer studies for you:

August 2007

Depressed Dopamine Activity in Caudate and Preliminary Evidence of Limbic Involvement in Adults With ADHD

Some very impressive researchers were involved in this study on ADHD, dopamine, and substance abuse. The researchers included Dr. Nora Volkow who is the Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and Dr. James Swanson from U.C. Irvine. I've been a fan of Dr. Swanson's work on ADHD treatment for many years.

This study concludes that ADHD is a real disease (ed.note: and not just something made up by drug companies to sell meds). ADHD is biologically caused and that dopamine production in individuals with ADHD is decreased, and that Ritalin increases dopamine production.

None of this is particularly new news, but the study is helpful to support this position, which we have held for about twenty years.

This is a debate that has been raging for years - does the use of stimulant medication to treat ADHD, such as Ritalin, increase the likelihood of later drug use?

If you read the material from the Church of Scientology, and their friends, the answer will be "absolutely - yes!" But if you read material from researchers and psychologists, the answer will be "probably not."

Our experience has been that, no, the use of stimulant medication such as Ritalin does not increase the chances of a child becoming a teenager who will abuse drugs.

But here's a real life story to illustrate how opinions are often formed on the question. It begins with my being in a classroom at Cal State Bakersfield where I was giving a lecture on ADHD to a class of future educators.