See this month's free myADHD.com tools below. Scroll down to Featured Tools.

Advertisement

Free Teleconference—ADD 101 for College Students
Featuring Victoria Ball, M.Ed., MCC
Wednesday, December 14, 2005, 8:30 -9:30 pm
Click here to sign up.

Research Updates    
The value of improving communication between parents, teachers, and primary care providers of children with ADHD.
Accurate assessment of ADHD and effective treatment requires that parents, teachers and primary care providers communicate with one another. Such communication should be ongoing throughout treatment so that adjustments can be made in medication or psychosocial interventions to achieve optimal functioning. This was made quite clear in the MTA study where best results were obtained when there was frequent monitoring of the child's performance via data collected from teachers and parents. Unfortunately, despite the importance of ongoing communication, little of it actually occurs among stakeholders. A study published in the Journal of Attention Disorders points this out.

A study by Mark L. Wolraich and colleagues examined interventions designed to improve such communication. Teacher ratings of 6,171 elementary school children identified 1,573 children with ADHD or with high risk for ADHD. Parent interviews and information from teachers were collected on 243 children who were randomized into treatment and control conditions and followed for 39 months. Interventions consisted of group workshops and single one-on-one tutorials with parents, teachers, and providers about the evaluation and treatment of ADHD. These sessions emphasized the need for communication among the three stakeholders. The investigators found that there were few significant effects on communication and they tended to be short lived. Both interventions, workshop format and intense individual session, were unsuccessful in sustaining increased levels of coordination between the parents, teachers, and physicians of children in the study.

Wolraich and colleagues postulated that school-based mental health services may be more capable of getting parties to communicate, however, studies assessing their effectiveness are few and none of them specifically address their use in children with ADHD. The study authors suggested that school nurses may be an appropriate conduit to provide the contact between teachers and physicians as they are in an ideal position to function as the liaisons between these parties. However, the number of school nurses employed by school districts has been declining and the efficacy of this system has not yet been studied in children with ADHD.

Wolraich, M.L., Bickman, L., Lambert, E. W., Simmons, T., & Doffing, M. (2005). Intervening to Improve Communication Between Parents, Teachers, and Primary Care Providers of Children with ADHD or at High Risk for ADHD. Journal of Attention Disorders, 9 (1), 354-368

December's Featured myADHD.com's Tools
This month's tools are reward charts that parents and teachers can give to children who display appropriate behavior at home or in the classroom.
• 3055 Free Time Reward Stickers
• 3058 Homework Pass
• 3053 Computer Time Pass
• 3054 Art Center Time

Subscribe to MyADHD.com today and view more MyADHD.com Reward Tickets and over 150 other Treatment Tools, Assessment Tools, and Tracking Tools for children, adolescents and adults.