What is ADHD Therapy by Mental Health Counselors for Children? - ADD / ADHD Message Board

Palms1 · 11-15-2003, 02:09 PM

I often read about therapy by Mental Health Counselors for ADHD children. What exactly is this therapy all about? Has anybody's child have had benefits from a therapy like that? I have no idea what they are trying to teach a child in a therapy session. If it's all about how to control impulsivity or hyperactivity, isn't that a bit like telling a vision impaired person to take off their glasses and see without them? I can imagine that it helps an adult somewhat, but how about children?

* Free ~ Spirit * · 11-15-2003, 02:19 PM

Theres diff types of therapy that an ADHD kids might benefit from. I'm thinking more along the lines of speech therapy and social interaction therapy, those types of things. What kind of therapy are you thinking of? Just regular talk therapy? I can imagine that might be useful for helping an ADHD child express themselves with words rather than their first impulse of say hitting or breaking something when theyre mad. It might also be helpful for an ADHD child who has an unsupportive family or co-occuring depression, just so they could get to talk to someone who understands better ya know. But which kind of therapy are we talking about here???

szarkam · 11-16-2003, 04:20 PM

My dsughter recently started attending "group therapy" It is a group of 5-6 childrena dn a counselor and they are given various scenarios and games to play and asked how they would respond or watched for reactions. They get 3 warnings and after the third warning they are "out" and can't "play" anymore and they will not receive a reward (token toy like baseball cards etc) so far it seems to be pretty good for her, but only time will tell.
Good luck to all

rubindj · 11-18-2003, 05:18 AM

Behavioral based and group therapy for ADD kids can be very useful as many of these children have mild to severe social interaction problems. In addition, anger management can be useful. Finally, there are some behavioral methods to control the ADD that are useful which can be learned. Over time, the therapy for many children can be as successful as the drugs in controlling behavior.

Another thing that can be very successful is family therapy to focus on parenting skills. Dealing with an ADD child is often difficult, and there are a lot of techniques that work very well with them, and some not so well.

Redhead23 · 11-18-2003, 05:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rubindj

Over time, the therapy for many children can be as successful as the drugs in controlling behavior

Interesting that you bring up medication in this context - wouldn't you say that drugs on their own, especially when started after a certain age (when the other kids have already learned their social skills) are far LESS effective if they are not accompanied by some sort of therapy? (i.e. even with drugs the kids are behind on social development etc. so they will need some form of therapy to help them integrate and use their own abilities to full potential)

On the other hand, medication can help children to become able to take in behavioural etc. therapy far better than they would otherwise be capable of doing - especially in a social setting, knowing which cues to look out for (others getting angry/upset with you) is not particularly effective as long as you are still unable to pay attention to these cues.