Education Revolution: Resources,
support and events for the 1 in 5
support and events for the 1 in 5
Russell A. Barkley, Ph.D., is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Virginia Treatment Center for Children and Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center, Richmond, Virginia. A member of ADDitude’s ADHD Specialist Panel, Dr. Barkley has published 23 books, rating scales, and clinical manuals, and he is the founder and editor of the bimonthly clinical newsletter, The ADHD Report.
The following are a selection of resources are made available free of charge on Dr. Barkley’s website.
Fact Sheet: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Topics (Barkley)
The Important Role of Executive Functioning and Self-Regulation in ADHD (Barkley)
Classroom Accommodations for Children with ADHD (Barkley)
ADHD: Making the Invisible Visible (S Young, M Fitzgerald, MJ Postma)
Sluggish Cognitive Tempo – A Review of the Scientific Evidence (Barkley)
What Causes ADHD? (Barkley)
A Critical Review of the Trade Book, ADHD Nation (Alan J. Zametkin, M.D. and Mary V. Solanto, Ph.D.)
Dr. Barkley also offers the general public—as well as mental health, medical, and educational professionals— science-based lectures on ADHD. More than 40 hours of lecture material here contains current, accurate information on ADHD and related topics.
Each presentation or lecture has brief description of its contents along with the option of either watching the lecture for free or paying to own a copy.
What is ADHD?
This introductory lecture for parents explains the primary symptoms of ADHD as well as the diagnostic criteria used by professionals to render a diagnosis of the disorder. It also explains the core difficulties children and teens with ADHD have in their executive functioning, which is the basis for self-control. Dr. Barkley also discusses the risks associated with ADHD if it is left untreated, including those in the social, educational, developmental, and medical domains.
What Causes ADHD?
In this introductory lecture for parents, Dr. Barkley discusses the many causes of ADHD, including neurological problems, heredity and genetics. He also reviews some of the causes of ADHD that have been disproven or for which there simply is no evidence. He concludes with information on the role of the family and larger social environment in ADHD.
The Treatments for Child and Adolescent ADHD Disorder
In this second introductory lecture for parents, Dr. Barkley reviews the major types of treatment used in the management of ADHD that have a substantial scientific basis. These include parent education and counseling, parent training in child behavior management, medications, and school behavior management and accommodations. He also briefly discusses the unproven and disproven remedies that have been proposed for use with child and adolescents with ADHD.
School Management of Children with ADHD
In this presentation Dr. Barkley focuses on school-based interventions for children and teens with ADHD. It is rich in detail offering more than 80 recommendations for school management strategies to deal with ADHD children and adolescents.
The 12 Best Principles for Managing a Child or Teen With ADHD
This presentation assumes that you have already viewed Lecture I above on the nature of ADHD. Here Dr. Barkley discusses those principles he has learned to be the most effective for managing a child with ADHD. This presentation is based on his more than 34 years of clinical work and research with children and adolescents with ADHD and provides 12 key ideas for successfully raising a child or teen with ADHD.
ADHD: Diagnosis, Demographics, and Subtyping
In this program, Dr. Barkley provides detailed information on the specific nature of ADHD symptoms and the current diagnostic criteria for ADHD. He then reviews the various modifications necessary for updating the DSM criteria and making them more useful with special populations (girls, adults, etc.). He also addresses the changes that are likely to be in store for DSM-5 to further improve these diagnostic criteria. Dr. Barkley then addresses the issue of subtyping of ADHD along with the emerging conclusion that one form of the inattentive type may constitute a new disorder known in research as sluggish cognitive tempo or sometimes called ADD by clinicians.
The Nature of ADHD: Part I – The Executive Functions and Self-Regulation
Dr. Barkley has developed one of the leading theories of executive functioning (EF) and its role in the the nature of ADHD. This theory is based on understanding the nature of the executive neuropsychological functions as a multi-level meta-construct and its contribution to self-regulation across time to support the individual\’s long-term goals and general welfare. In Part I of this course, he discusses the nature of EF and some of the problems that exist with its definitions in the clinical and research literature. He then shows how the executive functions can be understood as actions that are being self-directed in order to engage in self-regulation across time toward one\’s goals. Each EF is a type of action-to-the-self and Dr. Barkley describes the nature of each of these self-directed actions and the specific mental abilities they provide for self-regulation. He concludes with a discussion of the implications of this theory of EF for understanding the nature of ADHD as a disorder.
The Nature of ADHD: Part II – Executive Functioning and Self-Regulation as an Extended Phenotype
In this presentation, Dr. Barkley continues to build on his theory of executive functioning as self-regulation and to explain what it means for understanding and managing ADHD. In Part I, he described the cognitive or instrumental level of executive functioning. Here he shows how this level is only the beginning of how people employ their executive functioning in daily life activities. To understanding how people use EF in daily life, he creates a multi-level model of ADHD as an extended phenotype. Phenotypes in biology do not just end at the skin but extend outward from the organism to produce effects at considerable distances across space and time from the organism into its natural ecology. Dr. Barkley adopts this view from biology and applies it to understanding human EF. He shows how with each new level of extension of the EF phenotype outward from the person, they create a greater capacity for individuals to meet demands for effective adaptive functioning, for pursuing their goals, and for seeing to their long-term welfare across increasingly longer spans of time, using increasingly more complex and lengthy chains of behavior, relying increasingly on social relationships, and utilizing cultural methods and products. This is a unique and even potentially revolutionary view of EF that provides greater insights into this unique set of human mental abilities and offers numerous clinical implications for the assessment and management of EF and, by extension, ADHD.
Advances in Understanding the Etiologies of ADHD
This presentation reviews the major advances that have been made to understanding the multiple causes of ADHD. These include distinguishing between the acquired forms of ADHD and the developmental-genetic form. Evidence is presented to show that ADHD is largely a neuro-genetic disorder including recent findings from neuro-imaging and behavioral-genetic research. Dr. Barkley also brief discusses some of the etiologies that have been proposed for ADHD but for which there is little if any scientific basis.
Childhood Risks and Treatment Implications
Dr. Barkley outlines the risk factors associated with ADHD in childhood. These include research findings concerning the various impairments that can occur in family, social, educational, and medical domains from the disorder. He also discusses the relevant treatment implications resulting from those research findings.
The Importance of Emotion in Understanding and Managing ADHD
ADHD is currently understood to be a disorder of inattention, impulsivity, and usually hyperactivity that arises in childhood or early adolescence and is highly persistent over time in most cases. However, since the first medical papers have been published on ADHD starting in 1798, emotion has always been included in the conceptualization of the disorder up through the 1970s. But beginning with DSM-II and progressing to the present, emotional dysregulation has been excluded from the clinical conceptualization of the disorder and the diagnostic criteria and relegated to an associated problem or the result of comorbid disorders. This presentation reviews the evidence from the history, neuropsychology, neuro-anatomy, and observational research that shows that emotional impulsiveness and deficient emotional self-regulation are an integral part of ADHD. Returning emotion to its rightful place as a core feature of the disorder also serves to better explain the development of comorbid disorders, such as oppositional defiant disorder, and well as various life course impairments. Dr. Barkley discusses how to determine which aspects of emotional adjustment problems in ADHD cases are the result of the disorder and which are likely to be the consequence of comorbidity or other life course circumstances. He also addresses the implications of including emotion in ADHD for its management.
Optimizing ADHD Treatment – The Impact of Comorbidity
Over 80% of children and adults with ADHD have at least one other psychiatric disorder and more than 50% have at least two such comorbid disorders. Research now shows that the second disorder that co-exists with ADHD often has a significant clinical impact on both the understanding of the joint presentation of these disorders and the treatment of them. All ADHD is not the same in terms of management. Topics to be covered include: Past approaches to ADHD subtyping; Using comorbidity to clinically subtype ADHD; Prevalence of comorbidity in ADHD; and specific disorders and their treatment implications, such as Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Conduct Disorder, Anxiety Disorders, Depression, BiPolar Disorder, Autistic Spectrum Disorders, Tics and OCD, and Learning Disabilities, among others.
Parent Counseling and Home Management of ADHD
In this lecture, Dr. Barkley provides an overview of the scientifically proven treatments for ADHD. He also briefly discusses some of the disproven or unsupported treatments for ADHD. He then focuses on the essential topics one should cover in counseling parents about the disorder in their children and the key principles behind the effective management of children with ADHD. A brief overview is provided of some of the child behavior management approaches that might be used in parent (and adolescent) family training.
School Management of Children with ADHD
In this presentation Dr. Barkley focuses on school-based interventions for children and teens with ADHD. It is rich in detail offering more than 80 recommendations for school management strategies to deal with ADHD children and adolescents.
Medication Management of ADHD
In this lecture Dr. Barkley reviews the medication management of ADHD. It focuses first on the stimulant medications and issues related to their use, including common misconceptions, proven beneficial effects, and typical side effects. This presentation also discusses the benefits and side effects of atomoxetine, a nonstimulant approved by the FDA for use with ADHD in 2003, and the use of guanfacine XR approved for use for ADHD children in late 2009.
The Assessment of ADHD in Children and Adolescents
In this presentation, Dr. Barkley presents his view on the best means for clinically evaluating ADHD in children and adolescents. The goals of the evaluation are initially discussed followed by information to be obtained before the day of the evaluation as well as topics to be covered in the initial interview with parents and children/teens. The issues to be addressed by the evaluation and the best methods for doing so are then presented. The types of rating scales and psychological tests that are useful in the evaluation of ADHD will also be reviewed. Special attention is given to the problems with using neuropsychological testing to make a diagnosis of ADHD. The presentation concludes with the topics essential to cover in the feedback conference with the parents on the results of the evaluation.
