World of Psychology

St. John’s Wort for ADHD?

By John M. Grohol, PsyD
Founder & Editor-in-Chief

We’re really scratching our heads with this one.

As we noted yesterday, St. John’s wort is not an effective treatment for attention deficit disorder (ADHD). Okay. That’s fine. But when we looked through the literature to try and figure out why anyone would think St. John’s wort would be effective for ADHD, we came up empty-handed.

It’s fairly unusual to see researchers go to the trouble of a trial of this size and nature to prove a negative. But then when we saw one of the authors of the study was none other than the infamous Joseph Biederman of the Harvard scandal, the pieces fell together. To us, it would be like suggesting St. John’s wort may be an effective treatment for schizophrenia, since they both purportedly work on neurotransmitters in the brain (not far from the reasoning used by the researchers in the present study).

Biederman, as you may know, takes drug money from pharmaceutical companies. Nothing wrong with that, except that when you’re a researcher, you’d better make sure you make those ties well-known in advance. Oops! Biederman failed to report a measly $1.6 million of drug-tied money. Guess who gave him a lot of that money?

Yes, you’re right — the makers of certain ADHD medications.

Now, far be it for us to connect the dots here, but it seems strangely coincidental that one of the leading researchers of this study finds that a potentially competitive treatment is no more effective than placebo. Far be it from us to paint all researchers with the same tainted brush, but Biederman is now tainted by his failure to disclose this kind of huge sum of money to his own university. You know, that prestigious one… Harvard.

Typically null results like this make no headlines and no mainstream media picks it up. But this story made lots of headlines and lots of mainstream media picked it up. We find that unusual and can’t help but wonder at why this study was done at all.

Read the full article: St. John’s Wort Not Effective for ADHD


Comments


View Comments / Leave a Comment

This post currently has 5 comments. You can read the comments or leave your own thoughts on our new comments page.

Trackbacks

St. John’s Wort and ADHD « The Country Shrink (6/12/2008)

From Psych Central's World of Psychology:
Evaluating Drug-Free Alternatives for A.D.H.D. - World of Psychology (6/17/2008)


    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 11 Jun 2008
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.

APA Reference
Grohol, J. (2008). St. John’s Wort for ADHD?. Psych Central. Retrieved on May 26, 2012, from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2008/06/11/st-johns-wort-for-adhd/

 

Recent Comments
  • anonymus: As someone with this disorder, prevention could have saved me so much heart ache. Poor relationships, years...
  • hart: Alisa, Counseling is the best way I’ve found. Having a caring network of friends is important as well,...
  • carl: Samuel I trust that you did not perceive my response as a threat or as a contradictory statement even at the...
  • Joel Hassman, MD: Oh, and by the way, Dr Pies, here is another retort to your demand people use their real names at...
  • CandidFrank65: Interesting article. I have been living in Trinidad since 1965. The fact is that East Indians are much...
Subscribe to Our Weekly Newsletter



Find a Therapist


Users Online: 3518
Join Us Now!