About This Resource

The ADD & ADHD Help Center is an independent reference on attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, written in plain language for parents and for adults exploring the question for themselves. This page explains how it is put together, so that readers can judge for themselves how much weight to give it.

What This Site Is

It is a reading resource and nothing else. It is not a clinic, a practice, a treatment programme, a support service or a shop. It does not offer consultations, assessments, coaching or correspondence about individual cases. No practitioner is affiliated with it and no practitioner is recommended by it.

The purpose is narrow and deliberately modest: to explain each topic clearly enough that a reader can follow a conversation with a clinician, and to point them to the organisations that publish the underlying material.

Editorial Standards

A few rules govern every page.

• Clinical statements are attributed. Where a page states something about how a condition behaves or what a medicine does, it names the authority it is drawn from and links to it. Statements that cannot be attributed are not made.
• No doses, schedules or protocols. The site contains no dosing figures, no titration or tapering schedules and no step-by-step regimens, on any page, for any substance. Those belong in a consultation, not on a web page.
• No efficacy claims and no rankings. Approaches are described, not ranked. The site does not tell readers that one option works better than another, and it does not describe any approach as safe, effective, natural or preferable.
• Nothing is sold and nothing is recommended. There are no products, no affiliate arrangements, no sponsorships and no advertising. No supplement, device, diet, programme or practitioner is endorsed anywhere on the site.
• Uncertainty is stated plainly. Where evidence is weak, mixed or absent, pages say so rather than smoothing it over. Several pages exist mainly to explain that a popular idea is not well supported.

Sources

The site draws on public, freely accessible material from recognised bodies rather than on secondary reporting. The main sources are:

• The National Institute of Mental Health, for the description of the condition itself.
• MedlinePlus, from the U.S. National Library of Medicine, for medicine reference pages and general consumer health material.
• The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, for the evidence status of complementary approaches.
• The NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, for nutrient reference material.
• The American Academy of Pediatrics and CHADD, for clinical and family-facing guidance.
• The U.S. Department of Education, for the education-law material behind school support.

What This Site Deliberately Excludes

Some omissions are intentional and worth stating openly.

There is no self-test. Symptom checklists circulate widely and are easy to publish, but a score on a web page is not a diagnosis and can mislead in both directions. The assessment page explains what a real evaluation involves instead.

There are no personal stories. Individual accounts of what helped one particular child are compelling and almost impossible to generalise from. They also tend, in practice, to function as testimonials for whatever the writer happened to try.

There is no advice on stopping or changing medication. Pages describe what medicines are and what is documented about them. They do not advise anyone to start, stop, avoid or switch anything.

Currency and Limitations

Guidance changes. Diagnostic criteria are revised, medicines are reclassified, and the evidence on complementary approaches shifts as trials report. Where a page describes something that is actively contested, it says so — but the linked authorities will always be more current than any summary of them, and readers with a decision to make should treat those sources as the real reference and this site as a way in.

Most importantly: nothing here can take account of an individual history. A page can describe a category of medicine in general terms; it cannot know about an existing heart condition, another prescription, a family history or an allergy. That is exactly the gap a clinician exists to fill.