ADHD's Hardest Question - Should I Medicate My ADHD Child?

I think that anyone with ADHD would choose to manage his or her disease without medication if that were possible. I think that there is not a parent worth their weight in salt that would give their kid a pill every day if it were not necessary. There are behavioral interventions and dietary interventions that have been found to help ADHD and classroom modifications have also proved to be very helpful for children with ADHD. Parents are obliged to exhaust other avenues of treatment before resorting to a 'pill' cure. A 'pill' cure however is sometimes inevitable.

I work in health care. I see patients every day with uncontrolled high blood pressure, uncontrolled high cholesterol, and uncontrolled high blood sugar. Many of these patients have not even tried to control their diseases with life style modifications. Many of them continue to eat poorly, never exercise, and have made no modifications to their lifestyles to try and control their medical problems. Many other of these patients are doing EVERYTHING possible to keep their disease in check and despite their best efforts are still seeing laboratory values and blood pressures that are dangerously high.

The individuals described above should all be started on medications to control their dangerous medical problems. For those patients who are unwilling to try lifestyle modifications, medication is needed because these problems lead to great illness and even death and without medication, these individuals will have a very poor quality of life. For those patients who have tried everything and are still not controlled, medication is needed for the very same reason.

I think that for ADHD we are required to take the same approach for ourselves and for our kids. We need to exhaust every lifestyle modification measure available to control the symptoms of ADHD. If we succeed with lifestyle measures, we will need to stay vigilant and not stray from our daily regimen. If we do not succeed with these modifications or are unwilling to try lifestyle modifications, we should seek medication.

ADHD causes low self-esteem, squelches the attainment of our full potential as individuals, and isolates us because we can be difficult people to be around. While none of these things will kill us like say diabetes or hypertension might, they can make our lives sad and miserable. Studies done on young males indicate that the rate of suicide is increased when there is a diagnosis of ADHD. Whether this is related to the comorbidities of depression and Bipolar Disorder is unknown but the imperative to medicate in these cases is still the same. Daily medication is never our first choice. It is, however, our last resort because our lives and the lives or our children may very well depend on it.