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Videogames Used to Treat ADHD
deeptrace writes "USA today has an article about a videogame based treatment for ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). It uses NASA derived technology to measure brainwave activity while playing videogames. Clinical psychologist Henry Owens says 'If they just play videogames on their own, they will zone out. When they play on this system, if they zone out [as detected by brainwave activity], the videogame doesn't respond any more' This is supposed to help the patient increase the ability to focus and concentrate."
It's definitely both.
There are people who honestly have a neurological imbalance that causes them to have difficulty completing tasks, and in these cases drugs like Ritalin are a godsend, allowing them to normalize their routines. I know one or two people who have that, and without their medicine, they can make a ferret look like the paragon of focus and concentration.
On the other hand, ADD and ADHD make for a wonderful scapegoat for when children are acting up. Bright children being bored out of their skull in class? Must be ADD. I know from personal experience on this one - when I was a kid I was misdiagnosed with it, and I thank God that I had parents who knew enough to ask for a second opinion. It turned out that I was bored in class and reacting to food additives. Once I got into a gifted program in school and I stopped eating food I was reacting to, I settled right down.
It really does drive me nuts. Back in the 1980s when I was misdiagnosed, the misdiagnosis happened because ADD was "fashionable." Now it's an excuse. Pump kids full of sugar and chemicals and of course they're going to be hyperactive. Make them sit still in a classroom doing boring things and of course they're going to get restless. I just wish more medical professionals would rule out the obvious causes first before doping the kids up for having AD(H)D that they might not actually have.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
This is really starting to piss me off. Why is it that we must label everything that is not perfectly matched to our current society's customs as a disorder? I am ADHD. The main feature of ADHD is a different brain structure where the gap between neurons is larger (which is why only the strongest chemicals, i.e. the most impulsive chemicals, get through most of the time and why stimulants like Ritalin actually seem to calm someone wiht ADHD down). As such the brain of one with ADHD is does not think in the way that most people think. But that does not make us any worse than avg. Joe. It is not a disorder, but an evolution in the human brain. While it is harder for those with ADHD to stay focused in many environments put in front of us today, we have the uncanny abilities to: 1) be able to notice many different facets of our environment in a very short span of time and 2) we can hyperfocus. Hyperfocus is the concentration on a subject so intense that the rest of the world completely fades out (many programmers, such as myself, know what I am talking about). From TFA, it seems that scientists are trying to "cure" this "disorder". But why? How about focusing an creating teaching environments where people with ADHD can thrive and harness th advatanges ADHD gives them while minimizing its disadvantages? It has been said that some of the greatest forththright thinkers and creative minds of out time have had ADHD. Albert Einstein is theorized to have had the disorder. Also, the owner of Kinkos has ADHD and Dyslexia. It is not a disease, but a change. I hope someday the scientific community will realize that.
I find that although many people are liberal in beliefs, they are conservative in actions.
This article doesn't mention how this can relate to what is known as "hyper-focusing." Maybe this is what they mean by "zoning out" since the medical information is scarce, but there is a phenomenon observed in ADHD sufferers that shows while playing video games (and some other activities) they focus to the exclusion of all other stimuli, often for extended periods of time. I'm not sure if this is the same thing or a seperate symptom than "zoning out" but it might be worth looking into a bit more.
The patient should be taken to a society that tolerates no such behavior. In these societies, such behavior is met with punishment. Over time, the so called ADHD is made to get extinct.
Actually, physical punishment, or aggression of any kind, exacerbates ADHD to a large degree. Every wonder why hyper kids who are beaten stay hyper?
May the Maths Be with you!
having been diagnosed with adhd as a child, all i have to say is no, the 'drugs' they offer are little more then sedatives. treating them like they're a 'cure' is not looking at the problem, or the cause of the difficulty. so just passing out these drugs to 35% of US schoolaged children is NOT the answer to the problem (parents who aren't taking an active role in their child's progress, etc)
I got far more value out of the programs the therapists etc gave my parents to help me than the 'medications' which i stopped taking after 3 weeks because I could tell that all they were doing was making me tired, and the 'real' benefits weren't from the medications...
yeah, i'm sure some people might find the meds useful, but the're really not solving anything. They never have nor will they ever sell a magic pill that makes all the problems in life go away. If they ever do, it most assuredly will be a simple nanotech mind control implant, that allows your body to be used as a mindless robot while your mind drifts thorough an electronic fantasy world...
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
No wonder illegal drug use among adolescence is on the rise.
Goddamn right. You hit the nail right on it's head and sent it thru the board. I was 'diagnosed' ADHD *AND* 'Depressed' at age 5. Hello Ritalin and Desipramine, in MASS quantities (ritalin: 300 mg/day at a body weight of MAYBE 60 pounds. That's damn-near lethal IIRC, and Desipramine 100 mg/day.) And people wonder why I smoke so much pot... my body's been hyped up at such an early age from this nasty shit, and until I started smoking pot, I couldn't stay calm, or focused, or even sit still for more than 5 minutes at a time, let alone sleep.
In my case, Ritalin was my gateway drug, not marijuana. Some government assholes need to get some facts straight. I'm willing to bet many people my age that smoke pot today, were most likely on Ritalin earlier in life.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Please mod parent down. You smoke pot because you smoke pot, it has little to do with your illness. I empathise with you somewhat because I was an autistic child, in fact severely so, and I still am an autistic adult and will be till I die. Not saying autism and ADHD are the same, but I too suffer problems that would benefit from some calming, such as severe social anxiety, obsessions and compulsions, and so on. I have experimented with recreational drugs a little, such as pot; you don't help yourself in the long term, you're just screwing yourself up some more. There are plenty of things you can do to calm yourself down, other than pot. I have heard people use many, many excuses for their drug use; I'm sorry to say this, but ADHD or not, from reading your post, you just sound like a regular junkie. I know jukies too well. I live around them, I won't accept their bullshit of blaming someone else for their drug indulgence.
Folks, I have met about 100 Ritalin victims in my life, and every last one of them were either misdiagnosed or had nothing wrong at all before getting doped up. They used to call it "hyperactivity" and "dyslexia". It's proper name is "Bullshit" and if you aren't assertive about it, you'll be gambling with your children's lives. Every expert in the industry says so, and the only people you'll find saying different are the lowest-level beaurocrats - the lowest paid, coincidentally - could there be kickbacks involved?
Pardon the hyperbole, there really is info on this out there, but I'm too lazy to Google today.