A lot of teenagers, and even children, are prescribed antidepressants, somewhere from 1% to 1.5% of the population. At one point studies estimated that as many as 1.66% of children or adolescents were prescribed antidepressant medication, but after the FDA required a "black box" warning label for the medications in 2005, the prescription rate has dropped. The warning label states that the use of antidepressants among children and teenagers is associate with an increased risk of suicial thoughts, and suicial behaviors. So physicians have backed off of prescribing the medications.

However, the estimated suicide rate among American adolescents is about 16%. Read more of the article...

Depression in Teenagers

With as many as 25% of teenagers with ADHD being clinically depressed, it is important to understand what depression looks like, why it is important to treat it and manage it, and the treatment options available.

When we think of someone who is depressed, we usually picture a sad, tearful, lonesome person. But teenagers with depression don't look like adults with depression. Read more of the article...

Tourette's Syndrome is very close, in terms of genetics, to ADHD. As a result, those with Tourettes and those with ADHD may share a lot of symptoms, and it is common for children or teens with Tourette Syndrome to be misdiagnosed as having ADHD. When this happens, typically the child or teen is started on stimulant medication, and sometime within 18 months the tics associated with Tourettes will begin.

Here are our thoughts on this from our reply to a letter from a reader:

Dear Dr. Cowan, Read more of the article...

Let’s begin by pointing out that we have recently written about ADHD and Depression in Teenage Girls, and have even produced a brief internet video on the topic. As reported in that article, females with ADHD tend to have the “inattentive” type of ADHD (what we refer to as Winnie the Pooh type), where males tend to have the “impulsive-hyperactive” type or a “combined type” of ADHD (what we refer to as Tigger type ADHD). Read more of the article...

Recent Study on Milk and ADHD

Changes in our diets can be used as a treatment intervention for ADHD. And according to a recent study from Norway, it seems that at least a sub-group of children with ADHD have a particular type of protein imbalance that may be contributing to a child’s ADHD symptoms, or may be causing that child’s ADHD problem entirely.

The study began back in 1996 as a group of researchers and educators in Norway began a study of 23 children with ADHD. They placed the children on a milk free diet and have followed the performance of the children since. The researchers wanted to see if the ADHD symptoms in the children, particularly hyperactivity and impulsivity, would improve by avoiding milk, or more specifically the casein in the milk. Read more of the article...

Depression and ADHD in Teenage Girls