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 Researchers tested the effectiveness of medication against
behavioral interventions in 75 children that attended a summer
school program with classes each weekday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. for
eight weeks.
They randomly assigned children to receive either behavioral
treatment that included daily report cards for kids and coaching
parents to help with homework or a long-acting stimulant.
“Long-acting stimulant medications haven’t been shown to help with
homework performance despite companies advertising their utility for
homework time,” said lead study author Brittany Merrill, a
researcher at the Center for Children and Families at Florida
International University in Miami.
“Behavioral interventions are more effective than long-acting
stimulant medications in improving homework performance among
children with ADHD, and stimulant medication did not add to the
effectiveness of the behavioral intervention,” Merrill added by
email.
Researchers tested these two approaches in children who were around
8 years old on average, but ranged from 5 to 12. All of the kids had
an ADHD diagnosis with symptoms observed by parents or teachers.
Children were excluded from the study if they had a diagnosis of
autism, mental health disorders or medical issues that made them
unable to tolerate treatment with stimulants.
In the group assigned to receive medication, doctors worked with
kids over two weeks to assess the correct dose of drugs to give
them. After that kids received either a stimulant or a placebo for
three weeks, then switched, so researchers could see how drugs
impacted each child’s homework performance.
For the group assigned to behavioral therapy, clinicians led a
series of six 2-hour group sessions over the first two weeks,
followed by an individual half hour session during each of the next
two weeks.
Medication had no significant effects on homework completion or
accuracy, compared with a placebo, researchers report in the Journal
of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.
But with behavioral treatment, children got 10 percent to 13 percent
more homework problems finished and completed 8 percent more
problems accurately than they did without the treatment.
This translates into the difference between getting an average
passing grade of C with behavioral help, compared with an average
failing grade of F without intervention, the authors conclude.
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One limitation of the study is the potential for differences in the
children’s home or school environments to influence how much taking
medication might improve their homework performance, researchers
point out. It’s also possible that children might see improvements
associated with stimulants if they took a higher dose or used the
medication for a longer period of time, the authors also concede.
Even though researchers tailored the amount of homework and the
difficulty to each child’s grade level and academic abilities, it’s
still possible that the study results might not be easy to replicate
for every child with ADHD, the authors note as well.
It’s also possible that even with long-acting drugs, the effects
might wear off for kids who took medication first thing in the
morning then didn’t do homework until that night, said Dr. Tumaini
Rucker Coker, a pediatrics researcher at Seattle Children’s Hospital
and the University of Washington who wasn’t involved in the study.
“Since the homework performance was measured so many hours after the
medication was given, it is not surprising that there was no
medication effect,” Coker said by email.
“It doesn’t suggest that the child does not need the medication - it
may suggest, however, that by evening hours when the effect of the
medication has dissipated, behavioral interventions will be even
more important to help the child get through evening homework time,”
Coker added.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2dpeNEF Journal of Consulting and Clinical
Psychology, online September 12, 2016.
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
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