Wisconsin Today<\/a>\u201d that Kennedy\u2019s statements on the harms of medications like Adderall aren\u2019t based in science.<\/p>\n\u201cThe evidence is quite clear that the medications that are currently FDA-approved and prescribed to treat ADHD in particular are fairly well tolerated. They don\u2019t lead to early mortality \u2026 and they are generally very beneficial when used properly under doctor\u2019s orders,\u201d Li said.<\/p>\n
Kennedy has repeatedly dismissed the role of genetics in explaining the rise of diagnoses of disorders like ADHD and autism, arguing it is due to environmental factors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/AP25142773766804-scaled.jpg\")
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks as Education Secretary Linda McMahon listens during a Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission Event\u00a0in the East Room of the White House, Thursday, May 22, 2025, in Washington. AP Photo\/Jacquelyn Martin<\/p>\n
Li said that the environment does play a role in mental health conditions in children. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut it shouldn\u2019t be the only thing that we think about when it comes to intervention,\u201d he said. \u201cIt should be in concert with how we can also address the underlying biology that we currently know of that\u2019s quite relevant to these disorders.\u201d<\/p>\n
Li talked about the science behind testing for ADHD and where research on the disorder is going next.<\/p>\n
The following was edited for clarity and brevity.<\/p>\n
Kate Archer Kent: Why are stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin an effective way to treat and to manage ADHD?<\/strong><\/p>\nJames Li:<\/strong> [Stimulants] are basically a class of drugs that target two neurotransmitters in the brain: dopamine and norepinephrine. The reason why they\u2019re so effective at treating symptoms of ADHD, specifically in attention and focus, is because they target the parts of the brain that regulate executive functions: decision making, working memory and focus. That\u2019s what dopamine does, it\u2019s like the reward chemical of your brain and it lights up whenever we do something that we\u2019re really interested in. By targeting this particular pathway, we\u2019re able to light up the parts of our brain that\u2019s focusing on whatever it is that we\u2019re focusing on. The other neurotransmitter is norepinephrine, which has a sort of similar neurochemical component to it as dopamine.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe downside of these types of medications, though, is that you have to take them every day for the effects to take hold. There is an abuse potential associated with these particular drugs \u2026 but when they\u2019re prescribed and used [as directed], at a dosage that\u2019s meant to be therapeutic, [they]have a very low potential for abuse.<\/p>\n
KAK: Health Secretary Kennedy has claimed that environmental factors may be behind the rise in autism and other conditions. How do environmental factors affect the likelihood of someone developing ADHD?<\/strong><\/p>\nJL: <\/strong>That\u2019s a very large component of what underlies the development of ADHD over time. Not just your biology and your genetics, which do play a huge role, but so does your environment and the environment that you\u2019re raised in.\u00a0<\/p>\nFrom the research that I\u2019ve done in my lab, we\u2019ve shown that parenting style, parenting behaviors and parental monitoring plays a pretty big role in affecting the way that your genes work. The genes that you might carry for ADHD are more likely to be expressed under environmental conditions that are a little bit more lax and or perhaps adverse. We\u2019ve also found that exposure to early childhood traumas and adversities also increases a child\u2019s risk for developing ADHD.<\/p>\n
Again, this is in concert with their biology. So it\u2019s really a matter of not just one or the other, which I think our health secretary seems to be conflating saying that it\u2019s really more of an environmental thing. It\u2019s both. And not just both \u2014 it\u2019s the interactions between the two and how your biology and your genetics interact with the environments that you\u2019re in.<\/p>\n
KAK: Where is the research headed in ADHD? What does the Weisman Center want to focus on next?<\/strong><\/p>\nJL: <\/strong>Right now, we have a very big study that\u2019s looking at ADHD as a co-occurring condition with other neurodevelopmental disorders. That\u2019s where the field is headed: thinking about ADHD not just as its own thing, but kind of as part of other co-occurring conditions for which ADHD tends to show up in so many different conditions as well.<\/p>\nADHD is part of a constellation of other conditions in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) that are called neurodevelopmental disorders. Included in them is autism. We know that among the autistic community, roughly 50 percent of them struggle with ADHD and ADHD-like traits. It\u2019s one of the biggest co-occurring conditions that autistic individuals struggle with the most. We know very little about how to treat ADHD in individuals who have these co-occurring conditions like autism.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a meta analysis that came out a couple years ago that showed that autistic kids who were given stimulant medications to treat their ADHD symptoms actually had more adverse events and adverse risk profiles as a result of taking these medications, which are FDA approved and supposed to be safe. But these autistic kids who were given these medications actually did not fare better, and in many cases actually fared worse because they experienced a lot more adverse risk profiles as a result of taking the medication \u2014 which would suggest that these traditional medications that we\u2019re using to treat ADHD may not actually be effective in treating ADHD for certain individuals.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A recent report from the White House claims there are proven harms associated with over treating children with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4315],"tags":[105,4326,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-164482","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-medication","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114639635943302079","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}