Treating ADHD and Reading Disorders

About 30% of children with ADHD also havestudy also shows that even if your child does not
some form of reading disorder, such as dyslexia.have a known reading disability, treating his ADHD
Recently, a study was done to examine whethermay still improve his reading ability significantly.
or not ADHD treatment helped these children withThe results of the study were not all good,
their reading problems. The study was funded byhowever. A number of children had side effects
the pharmaceutical company, Eli Lilly and Companyfrom taking the medication, though none of them
and was done using their flagship product,serious. Yet Strattera is known to cause some
Strattera.serious side effects, including abnormal mood
In this 16 week study compared two groups offluctuations and even suicidal thoughts.
ADHD children. The first group consisted of 20Conclusion
children with ADHD who had no diagnosed readingThe results of this study suggest that a child's
disorder. The second group consisted of 36 ADHDADHD interferes with the child's normal ability to
children who also had a diagnosed reading disability.read. I say this because even children with no
After taking Strattera for 16 weeks, both groupsknown reading disability were able to make
of patients showed almost 50% improvements insignificant gains in reading level just by receiving
their ADHD symptoms like inattentiveness,treatment for their ADHD. If this is true then it
hyperactivity and impulsivity. Additionally, childrenshould not matter how you treat the ADHD, as
who had a reading disorder jumped two years inlong as you do something to treat it.
reading skills from their level before the study.With that in mind, significant improvements in
Interestingly, the children without reading disabilitiesreading ability should occur when you use other
also improved their reading skills by almost a yeartreatments for ADHD, such as Ritalin, other
and a half. Improvements in reading ability as wellstimulants, or even natural ADHD treatments.
as reading comprehension were shown in bothSince no one has yet to investigate the use of
groups. Also, advances in spelling ability wereother treatments for treating ADHD and reading
recorded for both groups. The ADHD groupdisorders, no one can say for sure whether or
jumped almost nine months and the group whonot this speculation is true.
had a reading disorder along with ADHD jumpedAll that we really know so far about the
almost 10 months.connection of ADHD and reading disorders is that
This study is significant for a number of reasons.in one small study, ADHD children both with and
First of all, up to 30% of ADHD children also havewithout reading disabilities were able to make
reading disabilities. While there is no real evidencesignificant gains in their reading level when their
that having a reading disorder makes a child'sADHD was treated. This study points out that it is
ADHD symptoms any worse, it definitely has aextremely important to treat ADHD and that
negative impact of school performance. Thesuch treatment should help school performance.