Disseminating Research Information through Facebook and Twitter (DRIFT): presenting an evidence based framework

Background: The social media platform Facebook boasts over 1,284 million daily active users globally. It is also known that a large proportion of adults use the internet to seek health related information.Aim: to critically analyse the use of social media to engage parents of children with ADHD with clinical research findings.Methods: Observation and qualitative content analysis combined with Facebook insights was used to evaluate the levels of engagement and interaction with different types of research information.Results: Over 1100 people from 41 nations have engaged with the group. Sharing information through a range of Facebook functions was found to successfully achieve engagement and reach nationally and internationally for this demographic.Conclusion: Lay research users are eager to engage and understand clinical research and social media is an appropriate way to disseminate this. This article has proposed some methods and explanatory reasons for this phenomena.Implications for practice: It is known that social media can be used for effective communication. This article presents a much-needed evidence based framework that may be used by nursing and health researchers to successfully achieve this

Coping Skills for Students with ADHD

Students diagnosed with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are often seen as problem students with little hope for academic success. It is common for these students to be medicated with a daily dosage of stimulants to help them function more appropriately in the classroom. This meta-synthesis identifies multiple ways to work with students with ADHD; effective interventions can help students with ADHD cope with their disorder and become more successful students

Psychologization or the discontents of psychoanalysis

This article explores the possibility of a debate between psychoanalysis and the human sciences and, in particular, between psychoanalysis and psychology. Psychoanalysis's particular view on subjectivity values fiction (truth having the structure of fiction) as a constitutive dimension of personal and social reality. In contrast, the mainstream psy-sciences threaten to remain caught in the attempt to unmask things as they really are (eg, hard neurobiological reality), thus risking losing the subjective dimension as such. Drawing on examples of phenomena of psychologization (in Reality TV and in contemporary discourses of parent and child education), the author spells out the different, but eventually and necessarily intertwined, responses of psychoanalysis and psychology to modernity and modern subjectivity

Parent training for preschool ADHD: a randomized controlled trial of specialized and generic programs

BackgroundThe New Forest Parenting Package' (NFPP), an 8-week home-based intervention for parents of preschoolers with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), fosters constructive parenting to target ADHD-related dysfunctions in attention and impulse control. Although NFPP has improved parent and laboratory measures of ADHD in community samples of children with ADHD-like problems, its efficacy in a clinical sample, and relative to an active treatment comparator, is unknown. The aims are to evaluate the short- and long-term efficacy and generalization effects of NFPP compared to an established clinic-based parenting intervention for treating noncompliant behavior [Helping the Noncompliant Child' (HNC)] in young children with ADHD. MethodsA randomized controlled trial with three parallel arms was the design for this study. A total of 164 3-4-year-olds, 73.8% male, meeting DSM-IV ADHD diagnostic criteria were randomized to NFPP (N=67), HNC (N=63), or wait-list control (WL, N=34). All participants were assessed at post-treatment. NFPP and HNC participants were assessed at follow-up in the next school year. Primary outcomes were ADHD ratings by teachers blind to and uninvolved in treatment, and by parents. Secondary ADHD outcomes included clinician assessments, and laboratory measures of on-task behavior and delay of gratification. Other outcomes included parent and teacher ratings of oppositional behavior, and parenting measures. (Trial name: Home-Based Parent Training in ADHD Preschoolers; Registry: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01320098; URL: ). ResultsIn both treatment groups, children's ADHD and ODD behaviors, as well as aspects of parenting, were rated improved by parents at the end of treatment compared to controls. Most of these gains in the children's behavior and in some parenting practices were sustained at follow-up. However, these parent-reported improvements were not corroborated by teacher ratings or objective observations. NFPP was not significantly better, and on a few outcomes significantly less effective, than HNC. ConclusionsThe results do not support the claim that NFPP addresses putative dysfunctions underlying ADHD, bringing about generalized change in ADHD, and its underpinning self-regulatory processes. The findings support documented difficulties in achieving generalization across nontargeted settings, and the importance of using blinded measures to provide meaningful assessments of treatment effects

Towards a functional model of mental disorders incorporating the laws of thermodynamics

The current paper presents the hypothesis that the understanding of mental disorders can be advanced by incorporating the laws of thermodynamics, specifically relating to energy conservation and energy transfer. These ideas, along with the introduction of the notion that entropic activities are symptomatic of inefficient energy transfer or disorder, were used to propose a model of understanding mental ill health as resulting from the interaction of entropy, capacity and work (environmental demands). The model was applied to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and was shown to be compatible with current thinking about this condition, as well as emerging models of mental disorders as complex networks. A key implication of the proposed model is that it argues that all mental disorders require a systemic functional approach, with the advantage that it offers a number of routes into the assessment, formulation and treatment for mental health problems