Treating ADHD and Reading Disorders

Treating ADHD and Reading Disorders
About 30% of children with ADHD also have some form of
reading disorder, such as dyslexia. Recently, a study was
done to examine whether or not ADHD treatment helped these
children with their reading problems. The study was funded
by the pharmaceutical company, Eli Lilly and Company and
was done using their flagship product, Strattera.

In this 16 week study compared two groups of ADHD children.
The first group consisted of 20 children with ADHD who had
no diagnosed reading disorder. The second group consisted
of 36 ADHD children who also had a diagnosed reading
disability.

After taking Strattera for 16 weeks, both groups of
patients showed almost 50% improvements in their ADHD
symptoms like inattentiveness, hyperactivity and
impulsivity. Additionally, children who had a reading
disorder jumped two years in reading skills from their
level before the study. Interestingly, the children
without reading disabilities also improved their reading
skills by almost a year and a half. Both groups improved
both in reading ability and in reading comprehension. In
addition, both groups made gains in spelling ability. The
ADHD group jumped almost nine months and the group who had
a reading disorder along with ADHD jumped almost 10 months.

This study is significant for a number of reasons. First
of all, up to 30% of ADHD children also have reading
disabilities. While there is no real evidence that having
a reading disorder makes a child's ADHD symptoms any worse,
it definitely has a negative impact of school performance.
The study also shows that even if your child does not have
a known reading disability, treating his ADHD may still
improve his reading ability significantly.

The results of the study were not all good, however. A
number of children had side effects from taking the
medication, though none of them serious. Yet Strattera is
known to cause some serious side effects, including
abnormal mood fluctuations and even suicidal thoughts.

Conclusion

The results of this study suggest that a child's ADHD
interferes with the child's normal ability to read. I say
this because even children with no known reading disability
were able to make significant gains in reading level just
by receiving treatment for their ADHD. If this is true
then it should not matter how you treat the ADHD, as long
as you do something to treat it.

With that in mind, significant improvements in reading
ability should occur when you use other treatments for
ADHD, such as Ritalin, other stimulants, or even natural
ADHD treatments. Since no one has yet to investigate the
use of other treatments for treating ADHD and reading
disorders, no one can say for sure whether or not this
speculation is true.

All that we really know so far about the connection of ADHD
and reading disorders is that in one small study, ADHD
children both with and without reading disabilities were
able to make significant gains in their reading level when
their ADHD was treated. This study points out that it is
extremely important to treat ADHD and that such treatment
should help school performance.

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Anthony Kane, MD is a physician and international lecturer
who has been helping parents of children with ADHD and
Oppositional Defiant Disorder online since 2003. Get help
with Oppositional Defiant Disorder child behavior
(http://addadhdadvances.com/bbsya.html), help with defiant
teens (http://addadhdadvances.com/teenhelp.html ) ADHD
treatment (http://addadhdadvances.com/cylsya.html ) and
ADHD information.