Autistic people have nervous systems that do not seem to be wired properly. They do not know what to pay attention to and what to filter out of their locus of attention. Many verbal autistic people describe a sound that prevents them from hearing the sounds in their environment. This white noise seems to interfere with the person’s ability to process sounds properly.

White noise may be the reason that many autistic people do not process spoken language very well. They have difficulty understanding spoken words and the words often seem to blend together into one stream of sound. Since the person is constantly hearing a humming or static sound, he is unable to focus in on words. Many autistic people have difficulty hearing words when they are used in sentences. A sentence may sound like one long word to an autistic person because white noise is interfering with the person’s interpretation of the sentence.

I worked with a little girl who could not tell the difference between words that begin with the letter W. This can be very troublesome and even a little dangerous. To her, the words, wait and want were the same. I would tell her to wait and she would use sign language to ask for a cookie or a treat. I would simply say, “Nope” and prompt her to wait. I didn’t know that she thought I was asking her what she wanted. She would become extremely frustrated and she would often have a tantrum out of frustration. This interfered with our progress in therapy.

It wasn’t until I read about white noise as a factor in autism that I made the connection. It seems that the similarities between the words want and wait would be obvious, but I never really noticed how closely the words resembled each other until I considered the obstacles the little girl faced while trying to understand what I was saying.

No one is positive that all autistic people hear white noise and no one is sure if they hear it continuously. Until we can find a way to effectively communicate with all autistic individuals, we will not be sure. Another thing to consider is whether we can redirect a person who hears white noise. There may be no intervention that can overcome that obstacle. However, the more we come to understand white noise in relation to autism, the more we can determine how to manage it.

Of course, the truth is that it varies between doctors, so an ADHD article tells an absolute, definitive medical position, but if you look at the facts, things really have changed a whole lot in the last ten years. The cutting edge in ADHD article research is now focused on the stories of kids who have been treated for ADD successfully without medication. There are many reasons why things have changed so much, so here are a few.

One of them is simply the fact that there have not been enough longitudinal studies done on the effects of using speed on kids. ADHD medication is usually made up of powerful stimulants, and although there has not been an epidemic of kids dying or anything like that, nevertheless, there is no one who knows for sure if these medications are really as safe for kids as they are claimed to be by the pharmaceutical industry. According to one ADHD article that I read, the reason that treatment by medication became so popular in the first place has to do with the tremendous amount of money which has been invested into ADHD articles by the pharmaceutical industry to claim that the medications are safe. More than one ADHD article questions this wisdom and says that, not only are the medicines not safe, but there are more effective treatments available today.

Some of the treatments advocated in an ADHD article are things like NLP, or various behavior modification programs, but many doctors say that they have gotten good results through simple things like diet. Now that my kid has developed ADHD, I think that I will try out what these articles have to say. Even if I can not find the solution in any ADHD article, it is worth trying if it means that there is a chance that my kid will not have to take medication.

Children with ADHD are often difficult to deal with because their behavior can be impulsive and aggressive. Without warning, these children can suddenly engage in unexpected and extreme behaviors. Parents look to ADHD treatments to deal with the difficult behaviors. Some find psychotherapy to be helpful in identifying and dealing with feelings that can cause aggressive and impulsive reactions.

Many children with this disorder have great difficulty following social rules because they have difficulty understanding many social situations. ADHD treatments should involve some sort of social interaction that requires the person with the disorder to learn the rules of social interaction. The problem lies in the child’s inability to focus long enough to acquire proper social skills.

Basic skills like eye contact and waiting for someone else to finish before speaking have to be deliberately taught to a child who has the disorder. It is also important to communicate that there are consequences for specific actions. If a child talks out of turn there should be consistent ramifications for the behavior. Otherwise, the interruptions will be repeated.

Many children who have ADHD are not fully capable of fully understanding the concept of past, present and future. These individuals tend to live in the here and now and they tend to quickly forget the past. They also do not think about the future. Since there is little regard for future events these children often act without thinking about the consequences of their behavior. Cause and effect have to be deliberately taught as well.

Behavior therapy has proved to be one of the most successful interventions that a family can use in collaboration with professionals. These ADHD treatments help the child develop a structure and routine. Behavior interventions also help the child develop social skills and learn cause and effect cycles of their actions.

It is also important to make some adjustments that will work with the child instead of against him. For example, I worked with a girl who had difficulty sitting still while completing assignments. Her ADHD treatments often revolved around getting her to sit still. However, we found that even though she sat without fidgeting, she was unable to concentrate. If she was allowed to move around she was able to complete assignments with relative ease.

No matter which of the ADHD treatments you choose it is still important to treat each child as an individual who has unique needs. Any doctor will first sit down to talk and observe the child. This is the first step in any successful treatment plan.

General Anxiety Disorder, impacting approximately 500,000 people in the U. S. alone, is also called Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and consists of the following symptoms, which I will include in a scenario:

JJ anticipated EVERYthing, from what my boyfriend said about her after she left the room to what her grades would be like in graduate school, which was years away.

JJ would apologize for the exaggerated worrying she would do, over and over and over, and then worry that she had burdened me too much with her worrying ways.

JJ was hard to be with when she was in this state of General Anxiety Disorder, especially when we were just arriving somewhere and she was jacked up, shifting about in her seat, acting as if any minute someone would enter the restaurant, party, or even restful living room and kidnap her at gunpoint.

Then JJ would be exhausted, after having spent less than an hour at a store or movie, for example.  If we were studying, she stare off, expressing the feeling of having a blank head, kind of nub.  Or she would be grouchy as hell over the smallest, most insignificant things, over minutiae that hours earlier she had been all antsy about the outcome of.

And JJ slept very little the worry or restlessness eclipsing natural tiredness or normal falling-to-sleep habits/patterns. Sometimes, she would be sick to her stomach, literally.

She had trouble in her other social circles, at school, and at work. She would come over to hang out, and within a matter of minutes, was clutching my arm repeatedly and having me investigate outside for creatures or criminals or was interrogating me about my having once talked to her long-distance chat-room boyfriend, accusing me of starting my own affair with the guy.

On many occasions, however, you would have no clue that JJ suffered with or from General Anxiety Disorder. She was calm and confident and even supportive of others in their own life challenges. One day, I was amped up over a car accident (caused by a hit and run driver who slammed the hell out of me and had to be chased down). She gave me one of her pills (I know this aint legal. Let me be.) That pill had me flying! Turns out, it was Xanaxa medicine prescribed by her shrink for the General Anxiety Disorder.

I tell the symptoms by putting them in a narrative format because I am not a medical practitioner. But I would swear by that little pill, the size of half a jelly bean. Why worry? It is a condition no one should have to suffer, and no one should nurture or aggrandize, for, as I think it was Mark Twain who said Worry is an investment on a product/property you will never get to own. And that’s a paraphrased version, but I am not going to worry about it, especially after seeing what those with General Anxiety Disorder go through with worry, and especially since JJ will likely read this and do all the worrying all over again for me.

All these is very stressing to me but I know JJ feels much worst. To be worrying about everything altogether and most of the time. What we can do for people like JJ is to be supportive. Try not to do anything to make her worry or give her any stress.

Because I did well in school, despite my occasional acting out, no one diagnosed my ADD until I was about twelve years old. They might have thought that I had behavior problems, but they didn’t even consider that ADHD treatments might help at the time, since they figured it was just a matter of acting out. It was actually my friends who diagnosed me with having ADHD. You see, they had ADD and ADHD themselves, and could spot one of their own. I went to the doctor, and he put me on Ritalin, as was popular at the time. I hated the Ritalin, as I would come to hate all of my ADHD treatments.

The problem with Ritalin is that it turns you in to a zombie. This is the most common complain among people of all ages going through ADHD treatments that involve this drug. You feel stoned all the time, and not in a happy way. It becomes hard to interact with other people, or to do anything besides what is in front of you. When I began stopping my ADHD treatments and refusing to take the Ritalin, my parents realized that they needed to try alternate therapies.

After that, they tried everything, and although some of it did make things a bit better, none of it really did the trick. They tried nutritional therapy ADHD treatment, where I avoided all processed foods and caffeine, and I guessed that helped a little, but the ADHD never really went away. They tried meditation, which I hated as how many people really want to spend an hour every day in their teens sitting perfectly still? They even tried Neuro-Linguistic programming and therapy, but I just started to hate the therapist after a little while, and it never went anywhere.

I am quite a handful, especially to doctors and therapist, when I was younger. Who likes doctor or therapist who are wasting your time doing what you do not like. I guess all patient feels that way.

I’m certainly not saying that attention deficit disorders don’t exist, I’m sure they do. However, what I am saying is if you or someone you know has been diagnosed with an attention deficit disorder, don’t go running directly to the pharmacy to get a lifetime supply of drugs. First of all, get a second opinion, and maybe even a third.

I was diagnosed with an attention deficit disorder and spent two months taking a stimulant drug that made me feel like I’d just drank 4 cups of coffee all day long. When I saw a second doctor about it, he told me about the in style quality of attention deficit disorders, and suggested I cease the medication.

Looking back on the experience, I don’t think I have an attention deficit disorder, but rather just wasn’t getting enough sleep during the time I was diagnosed. Therein lies the problem with attention deficit disorders; a lot of things can mimic the symptoms of one, and there’s really no way of telling what’s going on exactly.

Attention deficit disorders are especially popular as diagnosis for kids. School therapists just seem to love labeling kids with an attention deficit disorder whenever they can’t figure what else could possibly be wrong.’Personally, I think a lot of kids are just high energy by nature, and have trouble sitting still; I think it’s a bit extreme to label that a disorder and put them on amphetamine like stimulants.

Again, I’m sure that there are children out there that really do have a mysterious and unexplainable attention deficit disorder, but probably 9 times out of 10 they’re just being kids and will probably calm down when they get older.

While it seems that attention deficit disorders are finally beginning to wane slightly in popularity, they’re still a common diagnosis. It looks to me that the new stylish disorder is going to be bipolar disorder. I can’t wait for someone to diagnosis me with that so I can try some new drugs.

Myths and Misunderstanding of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD):

• Children will outgrow the disorder
• Cause of ADD cannot be placed primarily on social factors, such as parental characteristics, child management, or other family environmental factors.

According to the Diagnostical and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-IV, some of the most common signs and symptoms of existing attention deficit are inability to stay focused on a task, short attention span, poor attention to detail, failure to listen to when spoken to, failure to follow directions, careless or reckless behavior, restlessness, fidgeting, constantly moving arms and legs, not being able to sit still, or excessive talking. These symptoms are not all present in every case and vary from person to person, and from child to adult. A diagnosis of attention deficit must be made by a medical doctor or psychiatrist, who can prescribe the proper treatment regimen, including medications and counseling.

The most common medications used to treat attention deficit disorder are those called stimulants, such as Ritalin, Adderall, or Dexedrine. This seems strange because we think of stimulants as speeding you up instead of slowing you down, but in children and in some adults, stimulants have the paradoxical, or opposite effect. These medications have proven to be very effective for attention deficit disorder and are routinely prescribed in addition to behavior modification and individual therapy. Adults diagnosed with attention deficit benefit from coaches who can help them develop coping skills to improve organizational skills and work more efficiently at home and on the job.

There are several online resources available to anyone wanting more information on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, diagnosis, and treatments in adults and children. There is also quite a bit of controversy surrounding this diagnosis and the medications used to treat it. Stimulants can have side effects, and their use should be discussed with your health care provider, to determine if the benefits outweigh the risks.

You should never take any stimulants or medications without your doctor prescription. The doctor will need to access your family history and reaction to common drug before he/she will give any prescription.