Clinicians providing treatment for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may underestimate the extent to which patients use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). CAMs may include different herbal remedies and medicinal herbs, minerals, massage, and food interventions that are not evidence-based. However, CAMs also include evidence-based practices like exercise, omega-3 fatty acid supplementation, and meditation. This meta-analysis sought to determine how prevalent CAM use is among those with ADHD and included 4,447 patients from a variety of different studies with different protocols. Depending on the particular CAM, this study found that CAM use varies from 7.5% to 67.6%, which suggests that there is a large amount of CAM use. There were two particularly interesting findings from this study. First, these data show that females are more likely to engage in CAM use. This is thought to be an extension of the fact that females are more likely than men to utilize healthcare services in general. Additionally, this study found that parents of children with ADHD with higher education were more likely to engage in CAM use, and should be considered a predictive factor of CAM use when meeting with patients.
Reference:
Wu, J et al. J Atten Dis 2022;00(0):1-13. Abstract.