A New Understanding of ADHD in Children and Adults Executive Function Impairments

For over 100 years, ADHD has been seen as essentially a behavior disorder. Recent scientific research has developed a new paradigm which recognizes ADHD as a developmental disorder of the cognitive management system of the brain, its executive functions. This cutting-edge book pulls together key ideas of this new understanding of ADHD, explaining them and describing in understandable language scientific research that supports this new model. It addresses questions like:

- Why can those with ADHD focus very well on some tasks while having great difficulty in focusing on other tasks they recognize as important?

- How does brain development and functioning of persons with ADHD differ from others?

- How do impairments of ADHD change from childhood through adolescence and in adulthood?

- What treatments help to improve ADHD impairments? How do they work? Are they safe?

- Why do those with ADHD have additional emotional, cognitive, and learning disorders more often than most others?

- What commonly-held assumptions about ADHD have now been proven wrong by scientific research?

Psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and other medical and mental health professionals, as well as those affected by ADHD and their families, will find this to be am insightful and invaluable resource.

Introduction. 35 Myths about ADHD and Why They are Wrong. A New Paradigm for an Old Disorder: ADHD as Impaired Executive Functions. What Research Reveals about the Causes and Unfolding Nature of ADHD. How the New Model Changes Assessment in Children and Adults. How Treatments for ADHD Affect the Brain and Improve Executive Functions. Why Many Learning and Psychiatric Disorders so often Co-Occur with ADHD.

Thomas E. Brown, PhD, is Associate Director of the Yale Clinic for Attention and Related Disorders and Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, developer of the Brown ADD Scales for Children and Adults, and author of the prize-winning book, Attention Deficit Disorder: The Unfocused Mind in Children and Adults. Visit the author’s website at www.DrThomasEBrown.com.