By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on May 25, 2009

Superior intelligence is no defense against the effects of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder.

Yale researchers discovered about three of four ADHD individuals with an IQ of more than 120 – a score that ranks them in the top nine percent of the U.S. population – showed significant impairments in memory and cognitive tests when compared to people with similar IQs who do not suffer from the disorder.

The report, to be published in the September print edition of the Journal of Attention Disorders, is now available online.

“Many of these people are told they can’t be suffering the loss of executive function (the ability to plan and carry out many day-to-day tasks) from ADHD because they are too smart,” said Thomas E. Brown, assistant professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and lead author of the study.

The high-IQ, ADHD group lacked self-management skills and the ability to focus. They tended to procrastinate and be forgetful and had difficulty in harnessing their talent to complete many daily tasks, the study found.

In fact, 73 percent of the ADHD population showed significant deficits in five or more of the eight measures of executive function.

“Each of these individuals might be compared to a symphony orchestra of very talented musicians who cannot produce adequate symphonic music because the orchestra ...

By Will Meek, Ph.D.

A subject that gets very little press time is mental health for high school athletes. Millions of adolescents across them United States play high school level sports, and many of the struggle with unrealistic expectations, pressure from parents and coaches, and depressing competitive defeats. Unfortunately, many of them do not receive the support they need to maintain a positive attitudes toard their sport and themselves. This past week, the LA Times had a story on the subject , and hopefully it can raise some awareness for the needs of these kids. A complicating factor that is also discussed is how over-involved parents can do a disservice to their kids by intervening in difficult situations.

Levine insists that parents are actually intervening too often in a child’s life, whether challenging a teacher about academics or confronting a coach about playing time, thus preventing their son or daughter from learning how to deal with distressing situations.

As a former high-school and college athlete and offical, I can recall countless instances of this type of interference, all of which resulted in the embarrassment of the involved athlete, rather than an alleviation of the stressor. Hopefully parents can take cues from this article and will learn to put some of that energy toward working with their children on problem solving those situations, rather than attempting to change the situations for them.

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