Expert: Sarah-Jayne Caroline Bass from www.adders.org - 6/22/2006

Question
Hey Caroline.

A friend of mine was diagnosed with ADHD about 14 years ago, when he was 2. He's been on medications fairly constantly since, except for the odd day every now and then when his parents forget to give it to him.
The problem is (besides my disbelief that he has ADHD- not the point) that in the last year or so he's become violently depressed. He says the only emotion he's capable of feeling is anger while he's medicated... he's gone into a few rages where he blacks out, and he's attempted to set his house on fire several times. Accidentally, but it seems to me that he was doing it on purpose subtly (for instance, carrying a lit candle and tripping, spilling hot wax and a lit candle onto a pile of newspapers.)
Unfortunately, his mom's belief is that he isn't getting enough discipline- thus, every time he acts out he's 'restricted'- no tv, phone, radio, friends, gameboy, or being out of his room- for a week or more. This isn't working. It's making him bitter at his family.
The thing is, when he's off Adderall, he's perfectly normal. Seriously. He's intelligent, witty, energetic but not hyper- pretty much a normal 16-year-old boy.
However, she refuses to listen to me, or my parents, or really anyone else. I'm afraid that Andrew (my friend) will black out again, but do something really bad. Is there anything I could possibly do?

Answer
hi

i am not medically qualified so to be honest i would suggest that he perhaps speaks to his doctor when he next gets to see them

the other thing is that my main website is at http://www.adders.org and on there we have forum boards where we have an ask the expert forum where the expert is a doctor so i would suggest that maybe you check this out and post this there for him to see what he can say to help you further

hope this helps