WHO Rejects Methylfenidate for ADHD

Methylphenidate for ADHD rejected from the WHO Essential Medicines List due to uncertainties in benefit-harm profile

1. Ole Jakob Storebø1,2, 
2. Christian Gluud3

I felt a familiar sense of relief when I saw this repudiation of Ritalin and other medications as an effective treatment for attention related disorders. My training as a psychotherapist included the fundamental premise that medication was something to be used as a way to help to work effectiveliy in therapy. This perspective has been eclipsed by the promotion of medication as curative or the only thing that was needed for the remediation of neuropsychiatric disorders. I've spent the last 15 years working with children and adults having been given this diagnosic label and regularly finding that the side effects of these medications were signfiicantly more challenging than was indicated they should expect from their prescribers. I am aware that I'm writing this post the American presidential electtion has been decided in favor oif the candidate who promoted harm reduction with regard to COVID 19 and the climate crisis. The awful truth is that there are alternatives to amphetamines and related medications that have been assiduously avoided being given the funding and clinical attention they deserved. I hope the new administration will seize on this decision by the WHO and fund research to evolve a treatment service delivery system that will enhance cognition and behavior by promoting non-drug, noninvasive neurophysiologically-based methods of self-regulation, e.g., neurofeedback training. 

i think we are witnessing a powerful shift in perspective and hope the new administration in Washington can't act definitively to authorize the Department of Education to focus on recruiting competent, trauma-informed integrative health- oriented professionals to take up the challenge of improving public education. The FDA needs to rebuild its credibility and focus on supporting evidence-based treatment models predicated on doing the less invasive before more invasive interventions. Therapeutic methods that can be delivered remotely are now essential and we have shown that neurofeedback and other neurotherapeutic methods are precisely what's needed to promote improved levels emotional and behavioral regulation and academic perofrmance without risking exposure to COVID 19. 

Quietmind is promoting the use of near infrared light stimulation as a useful part of a broader CV!9 prevention strategy as well as to reduce the severity and likelihood of post-infection neurological symptoms. 

ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2020/04/24/bmjebm-2019-111328