According to the National Institute of Mental Health “ADHD is one of the most common mental disorders in children and adolescents and also affects an estimated 4.1 percent of adults, ages 18-44, in a given year.” Now, with that said, psychology also has a “flavor of the day” diagnosis that gets put out in the media and when that happens it’s on people’s minds more and therefore it is looked for more often. When a person is looking for a diagnosis of ADHD, they may be more likely to spot the actual symptoms of difficulty focusing on organizing and processing information, seeking stimulation and experiencing moodiness. Therefore, they may actually be more likely to spot ADHD and this can be wonderful for someone who actually has ADHD. However, diagnosis can be tricky as many people may show these similar symptoms with underlying issues may be stress, family conflict, grieving, addictive behaviors, or feelings associated with anxiety and depression.
If people are misdiagnosed, they are usually treated with stimulants which may be helpful, but is not healing for the underlying issues. Whether the diagnosis is ADHD or another underlying issue, I often recommend that the person who is struggling seek alternative treatments to medication only. There are a number of good alternative suggestions people give to support the diagnosis of ADHD such as exercising, eating the right foods, moving, and even being exposed to blue light which arouses the frontal lobe of the brain, the area that is dampened in true diagnoses of ADHD.
Lydia Zylowska , M.D., is a Psychiatrist in Los Angeles who created a mindfulness-based intervention for adolescents and adults who suffer with ADHD (ADDitudes Magazine Article). In an initial pilot study, she brought participants through an 8-week program of cultivate a mindfulness meditation practice in daily life to help focus and retrain the mind. Here study included 24 adults and 8 teens, two thirds of who continued on stimulant medication and a majority of who struggled with comorbid conditions, mainly mood disorders. Seventy eight percent of participants reported a reduction in total ADHD symptoms above and beyond the use of medications. Thirty percent reported at least a 30% reduction in ADHD symptoms which is the number used in ADHD medication trials to measure clinical significance. In other words, 30% reported the same or better improvement than the medications. There were also significant improvements on tests associated with attentional conflict, a key symptom in ADHD. Participants also reported a significant reduction in symptoms associated with depression and anxiety. So, even if the person was misdiagnosed, they still received benefits from this practice.
These results are promising and support the notion that using mindfulness meditation to begin to train the mind can support people to become more focused, productive, and happy in day to day life. There is something about a practice that has you come down from the busy-ness of the mind to focus on the present moment in a non-judgmental way. The effect is often a calming of the nervous system and a break from the barrage of self-judgments that we inflict on ourselves all-too-often. The other effect is a realization of how hard we are on ourselves which often incites feelings of compassion and in the field of mental health, this is considered a strength and supports resiliency.
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“In her study, 78% of participants reported a reduction in ADHD symptoms above and beyond the use of medications.”
Since you neither link to “her study” nor provide details as to how many subjects were included in the study, how the participants were selected, how many dropped out before the end of the study, whether they were also taking medications, what comorbid conditions they exhibited, etc., etc., a statement like this one is pretty much meaningless.
I would also note that following the link you supplied to an article about Dr. Lydia Zolowska’s program includes comments from people who have tried mindfulness as a “treatment” for ADHD with limited or no benefits.
Hello,
thank you for an interesting blog.
Mind the typo in Zylowskas name.
Hi,
Thank you so much for catching that typo, I’ve now fixed it. Also, thank you to djbaxter for picking up those clarifying points. I’ve since added into the text the number of participants, inclusion of comorbid conditions, and link to her website which has links to her study on it. This was not meant to be a deep investigation into her research, but was just a look at research that is suggestive that using mindfulness can be beneficial with ADHD symptoms as an complement to medication and/or as an alternative treatment.
There are always going to be people who don’t benefit from any approach. The trick in the field of mental health is to find treatments that suggest that they can be helpful to many and I believe this study holds promising results and suggests that it may be a complementary treatment approach for teens and adults with ADHD.
I’m not very satisified with this study at all. At most, it’s preliminary, and doesn’t prove anything more than “more research warranted”.
No control group. No placebo. The patients knew exactly what they were getting, and on top of that, the improvement was by self-report measure. With absolutely no guarding against the placebo effect, this isn’t anywhere near conclusive.
Promising? Yes. Meditation has been proven (in properly placebo-controlled studies) to help with all sorts of things, including the physical and mental stability of people without any diagnosis at all. But saying that it helps ADHD especially, or how much it helps, is impossible with just the information in this study. Plus, remember that a certain degree of concentration is needed to meditate at all–it’s notable there were no children in the study; children with ADHD might not have been able to lie down or sit still for the time necessary to do any good.
More research needed.
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