Shawn Christopher Shea, MD has been fine-tuning the art of doctor-patient communications for over 30 years. He shares his tips on talking about medications.

There is still confusion about ADHD, especially the name itself. People with ADHD can pay attention well when they’re interested in what they’re doing. Not knowing this, it’s easy to see why so many people still don’t believe the condition is real.

ACT seeks to teach us to mindfully observe our internal and external experiences and to increase our willingness to experience things, which may either be out of our control or otherwise necessary to honor our core values.

If you want to comprehensively understand your patients and modify variables that might impact treatment and outcome, it’s important to understand families. There has been a lot of research showing that the family environment can have a significant influence on the course of an illness, either in a protective or risk-inducing way.

In this interview, Dr. Shatkin talks about how the adolescent brain works, and how we can use this understanding to work more effectively in our practices with both adolescents and their parents. There’s a misconception that dopamine equates to pleasure. It’s not pleasure; it’s the promise of pleasure. Dopamine is the idea that something great might happen. And so high dopamine levels drive kids into high-risk situations with high amounts of potential pleasure. This is aggravated by the fact that the frontal cortical areas are not well myelinated yet and not well connected to the limbic system. So, when kids are younger, they have less control over those impulsive drives.

Integrative approaches to treating ADHD have become increasingly sought after by parents, especially those who are concerned about the side effects and potential overuse of psychostimulant medication.

Detox (also known as “medically supervised withdrawal”) refers to treatment to help patients withdraw from substances that cause physical dependence, such as alcohol, sedative-hypnotics, and opioids. But detox is far more than a several-day process of ridding the body of an addictive substance. It should be considered an important component in the overall care and treatment of addiction.

Currently in the US, cannabis has evolved into an issue of individual freedom, leading to full legalization in some states on the presumption that the substance isn’t addictive. Unfortunately, cannabis use disorder is indeed a problem for many patients, Kevin Hill, MD, tells us. In fact, says Dr. Hill, one of the greatest challenges you’ll encounter while treating patients is convincing them that cannabis use disorder is a real thing. Here are some treatment strategies.

Patients with intellectual disability often have difficulty controlling their emotions, which is what leads to so-called “challenging behaviors.” These behaviors include a range of aggressive and impulsive interactions, such as assault to self or others, stealing, fire-setting, sexual offenses, and other problematic situations.