ADD / ADHD Treatment - The Drake Institute

Treatment of Attention Deficit Disorder / Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Language Disorders and Autistic Spectrum Disorders

Prior to treatment at the Drake Institute, many of our patients suffered from some of the following symptoms. Please review these behaviors and mark those that apply to your child or adult family member. The checklist you receive should be brought to the orientation seminar so one of our clinical staff can determine if your child may be a candidate for our help.

Click here for more symptoms of Child ADD/ADHD

Auditory Language Disorder Checklist

Needing to reread information, (at the end of a page having to go back to the top and read it again because the information was not retained)
Poor spelling, grammar, and punctuation
Tendency to talk in circles or rambling on and on with difficulty getting to the point; difficulty organizing your thoughts and thinking of certain words to express yourself easily
Difficulty with written language (poor paragraph organization, unable to write a story or essay that is clear and sequential with an appropriate amount of detail. Cannot easily write your thoughts or answers into meaningful sentences and paragraphs)

Click here for more symptoms of Auditory Language Disorder

Adult Attention Deficit Disorder Checklist

Underachievement
History of being criticized for being lazy or unmotivated as a child or as an adult (criticism may have been unfair)
Difficulty paying attention or staying on task
Difficulty completing work projects without a long "to do list" and reminder notes

Click here for more symptoms of Adult ADD

High Functiong Autism or Asperger's Disorder Checklist

Child keeps to himself when free to play (e.g., lunchtime, recess)
Child is not interested in team sports or interactive board or playground games
Child lacks pretend play involving other kids
Child is not aware of unwritten rules of interaction (e.g., games with made-up rules are difficult)

Click here for more symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome

Proven Treatment
The clinical effectiveness of EEG biofeedback (neurofeedback) in the treatment of ADD or ADHD has been evident for 2 decades. There is extensive scientific research for many years supporting the clinical effectiveness of neurofeedback. As a medical facility, with the options of choosing drug therapy, our years of scientific and clinical knowldege leads us to choose EEG neurofeedback over the other choices for the treatment of ADHD. For maximum clinical results, psychosocial, family and educational support should be integrated with the EEG neurofeedback for comprehensive care. Neurofeedback is not a stand alone treatment but it is an essential component of our successful Full Care program.

Drake’s Neurophysical Training Program - N.P.T.
The Neurophysical Training Program reflects what has been learned after 25 years and 9000 patients. Unlike programs based on temporarily regulating brain patterns that are needed for required levels of attention, we are looking for long term change without ongoing treatment. Drug therapy is clearly temporary symptom relief. What may be less obvious is that some other treatments that appear to be similar to ours can often be temporary as well.

We seek long term change in the brain’s capacity, without side effects. To accomplish this we have our N.P.T. program which includes all the necessary factors required to meet this goal in the least amount of treatment time possible, with the best results. This is possible because of the details you will find below that are included in our tailor made program, based on all of our successes and limited failures.

Following are some landmark scientific studies on the effectiveness of neurofeedback in treating ADD.

Are the drugs for ADD / ADHD Safe?
Physicians must always weigh risks versus benefits. Though we feel that there are patients who may require stimulant drugs, it is a much smaller percent of patients than are currently put on stimulant drugs. Short-term, the drugs can cause anorexia, tics, psychotic reactions, altered cardiovascular functioning, emotional rebound, withdrawal effects, a slowed growth rate and chromosome damage. The long-term negative consequences of these drugs in childhood or adolescences are poorly studied, so remains largely unknown. There is concern with the possibilities of increased vulnerabilities to later addictions and other health problems. For these reasons, we feel that drugs should be the last option, not the first.

Following are significant scientific studies on the risks of these drugs, particularly in children.

What is Brain Mapping?
Quantitative EEG brainmapping (QEEG) or quantitative electroencephalogram is a cutting edge diagnostic procedure that can actually pinpoint the abnormal brainwaves in ADD patients.

By itself, the QEEG does not diagnose ADD, but carefully correlating the QEEG information with other clinical findings, it can support the diagnosis of ADHD or suggest otherwise.

Because of different subtypes of ADD, we feel that a QEEG is important in complex cases or patients with comorbidities such as anxiety, depression, high functioning autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, tics, overly aggressive or explosive behavior, and oppositional-defiant disorder. The QEEG can identify the specific pattern of the brainwave abnormality and help in developing the most effective neurofeedback protocols for the patient. It is similar to doing a bacterial culture and determining which antibiotic would work best for that infection. We do not feel that every patient requires a brainmapping but more complex cases do.

Treatment of Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders for Children and Adults