I remember the first time I held (and shot) a gun that didn’t shoot water.

I was a teenager. Fourteen? Fifteen, maybe? I was young.

My dad spent an hour one afternoon playing with his new BB gun. I found him in our backyard on a warm summer day taking shots at an empty cardboard shipping box. He was aiming at the “F” in “FRAGILE”.

I stood on our back deck and listened to the obligatory stories about how he and the neighborhood kids used to shoot birds and squirrels with BB guns when he was a teenager.

A teenager? Hmm. I was a teenager. I’d never shot a gun before.

I asked if I could try shooting it. If he used to play with a BB gun at his age, why couldn’t I?

Somewhat reluctantly, he let me try it.

“Aim for the G,” he said, “because it’s right in the middle. And be careful.”

Despite my best aim, my first shot went straight into the dirt. My second shot hit the top edge of the box and my third hit the wall of the garage. (I don’t remember my dad being too happy about that last one.)

A week ago, an op-ed appeared in the New York Times by L. Alan Sroufe, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development, questioning society’s reliance on medications to help children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). He suggested that Ritalin has “gone wrong,” in that we simply rely too heavily on drugs to treat childhood disorders.

He starts off the op-ed, “As a psychologist who has been studying the development of troubled children for more than 40 years, I believe we should be asking why we rely so heavily on these drugs.”

Like most professionals who are trying to boil down decades worth of research into a layperson-friendly length, Dr. Sroufe unfortunately glosses over the psychological literature and what we know (and don’t know) about ADHD medications.

I will say this before we begin… most children would benefit not just from being prescribed an ADHD medication, but also getting specific psychological treatment as well. Few child psychologists and child specialists would be happy if their patients were only getting the benefits of one type of treatment, and many would agree that parents are too quick to medicate before trying non-medication options.

You might ask, “Why would anyone want to fake attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)?”

Many years ago, when ADHD was first proposed as a diagnosis, you would’ve been right — few people would’ve bothered faking the diagnosis because it brought you little reward to do so.

But as ADHD diagnoses bloomed over the past two decades, so did special accommodations in the school systems for children and teenagers diagnosed with the disorder. And one of the primary treatments for attention deficit disorder is stimulant medication, something that can be used for less-than-legitimate reasons.

Could teens today really be faking ADHD to get into college?

Welcome to the world of unintended secondary gains and rewards.

“Because people with ADD live fairly fast-paced lives, they can forget to slow down a little and consider whether they are living a balanced life,” writes ADHD expert and psychotherapist Stephanie Sarkis, Ph.D, in her book 10 Simple Solutions to Adult ADD: How to Overcome Chronic Distraction & Accomplish Your Goals.

Self-care is key to balance. In her book Sarkis shares the various ways people with ADHD can practice self-care. This includes attending to your physical wellness, emotional wellness and spiritual wellness.

(By the way, these tips also are great for everyone.)

Here are valuable suggestions from Sarkis’s book on practicing each type of wellness.

If you’re like some Americans today, you’re looking for a place to fill your prescription for generic medication used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Or your parent is, since most people who take ADHD medications are actually children and teenagers.

But the U.S. federal agency responsible for the shortage — the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) — couldn’t care less.

Even when requested by another agency — the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — to help relieve the shortage, the DEA just turned up their noses.

It’s no wonder voters get so sick of government interfering in their daily lives: One short-sighted federal agency tries to lessen an already minor problem — abuse of ADHD medications by a tiny minority of people — that ends up significantly impacting thousands of others unintentionally.

As the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders continues to develop, there has been more and more reaction from professional groups with concerns. The most recent of these is an open letter that was sponsored by group of American Psychological Association divisions, and you can read it here: Open Letter to the DSM-5.

The biggest complaint here is that the DSM-5 development committee appears to have departed from the “atheoretical” approach that the past two version of have taken, in favor of a clear biomedical approach. The DSM-5 also seems to be changing the very definition of mental disorder by adding the criterion: ‘[A behavioral or psychological syndrome] that reflects an underlying psychobiological dysfunction.’

Let me state up front that I have no doubt BPA — a chemical used in the manufacture of many modern goods, including in the past many water bottles and sippy cups — is something we should get rid of in any connection to food. But at the same time, I have to speak out when a scientific study’s findings are misused to forward political agendas.

The findings here come, once again, from the journal Pediatrics. It seems like a month doesn’t go by when this journal is publishing more crappy science, and then draping it in a public relations campaign that gets everyone’s attention. (Actually, to be fair, the science is sometimes fine; it’s the over-reaching conclusions drawn by the researchers and the PR media machine that is truly vomit-inducing.)

In this case, the researchers set out to followup on a previous study that found higher gestational (in the womb) BPA levels increased hyperactivity and aggression scores in 2-year-old girls. They wanted to determine if these findings continue as the children age, whether executive functions were impacted by higher BPA levels, and whether it was gestational BPA as opposed to childhood BPA levels that were more important.

Taking medication can seem like a mystifying process, and many people rely exclusively on their doctor to prescribe the right drug and dose. After all, they’re the experts, right? But some doctors may not be well versed in treating adult ADHD, and may get it wrong.

So what can you do?

The key is to educate yourself about medications for adult ADHD. And, fortunately, there are tons of great resources to become a smart consumer.

I recently came across an excellent piece on medication in ADDitude magazine’s Fall 2011 issue by author Gina Pera. Specifically, the article lists 10 erroneous statements doctors may make about ADHD drugs and the facts behind each one. If your doctor mentions any one of these statements, the author suggests giving them a copy of the treatment guidelines from the Canadian Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Resource Alliance, an organization made up of ADHD experts. Or find a new doctor.

Below, I’ve summarized four facts from the article, some of which might surprise you. Be sure to check out the entire article!

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is well-represented here on Psych Central through Zoë’s …

Ah, Pediatrics. You publish such ridiculous studies sometimes. We called you out for the flawed study on ‘Facebook depression’, a shoddy study which should have never made it past your reviewers without some serious work.

Now you’re in the news again for a study about SpongeBob SquarePants, the apparently evil cartoon that will turn 4-year-old’s minds into mush after just 9 minutes of viewing. While you also published a somewhat more balanced commentary article alongside the study, nobody seemed to notice it.

And why would they? This study was a siren call to over-generalize and suggest we have found one of the enemies attempting to influence our children. And he wears square pants.

I worry about many things, and I probably fear more things than that. So when I find out that other worrywarts and anxiety sufferers are able to successfully overcome their struggles, I get excited. And I get motivated to push through my own fears.

And I don’t feel so alone. That’s because when you’re struggling with something, it’s natural to feel like you’re the only one on the planet with such problems.

Having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can certainly feel this way, especially if you’re a woman. (We typically hear more about boys and men with the disorder.)

Maybe you don’t know any women with ADHD. Maybe you feel overwhelmed by your symptoms. Or you don’t think you measure up because keeping a tidy household is impossible. Or you don’t think you’ll be able to do great things.

People with ADHD tend to have issues with anger for several reasons, said clinical psychologist Ari Tuckman, PsyD, and author of More Attention, Less Deficit: Successful Strategies for Adults with ADHD. One contributing factor is neurology. “People with ADHD tend to feel and express their emotions more strongly,” he said.

Comorbidity with depression and anxiety also is common, and, as a result, leaves individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) feeling “more irritable, emotional and angry.” Plus, the intrusive symptoms of ADHD don’t exactly lend themselves to a relaxed disposition. Problems with planning, for instance, make people feel overwhelmed, and, in turn, triggers negative emotions, Tuckman said.

This constant state of overwhelm just fuels the fire. “Feeling chronically overwhelmed can certainly shorten someone’s fuse,” he said. Also, “people with ADHD may feel like they need to defend themselves or justify their actions too often and thereby react more angrily than they otherwise would.”