LD OnLine News Headlines

As Linda McMahon further splits up the Education Department, some parents worry about a disjointed approach to serving kids with disabilities.

While a top official says students will retain all their rights under federal law, some advocates and lawmakers call the transfer harmful and disruptive.

“When we talk about stopping medication…we need to ask, ‘What are we asking this person to give up and what supports are we using to replace it?’”

Emotionally adjusting to a diagnosis of ADHD as an adult is rife with dialectics, according to a new study published in Journal of Attention Disorders.

Researchers and clinicians say the shortage is due to limits on manufacturing and sales of the medications, and supply chain problems.

Oscar award-winning director Steven Spielberg, 79, is opening up about his favorite books. In a recent interview with book influencer Jack Edwards, the Jurassic Park director shared details on the books and authors he loves and the book he recommended to each of his seven children. He also revealed why reading can be difficult for him sometimes. 

‘I get frustrated inside the brain … my speech does not want to work,’ says man living with aphasia

Researchers and clinicians say the shortage is due to limits on manufacturing and sales of the medications, and supply chain problems.

ADHD, mild cognitive impairment, dementia, and other conditions that cause cognitive complaints (like perimenopause) can co-occur.

Find out if you can join the military with ADHD or anxiety. Learn about waiver requirements and how MEPS evaluates medical records.

A woman who was diagnosed with ADHD aged 39 says she has found her purpose in life after switching careers.

How to spot and protect yourself from workplace bullying and gaslighting as a neurodivergent employee.

Accommodations for ADHD ensure student success, but maintaining multiple 504 Plans and IEPs can lead to teacher burnout. Here’s how to streamline the process. 

A crash course on the neurotransmitters implicated in ADHD and how new medications are targeting serotonin, a historically overlooked chemical in ADHD treatment.

Multiple states are suing after the U.S. Department of Education abruptly canceled millions of dollars in grants that were supposed to go toward training special education teachers.

Some of the ADHD we’re seeing may be the product of technological advancements.

California began screening all students in kindergarten through second grade this school year to determine whether they are at risk of developing reading difficulties, such as dyslexia, after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a landmark bill into law in 2023.

The screenings are part of a set of policies that aim to raise the number of California third graders reading at grade level — 56% of whom fell short this academic year — by reimagining how kids are taught to read. 

Four school districts now want to sue Kansas for inadequate funding of special education.

The districts formed the Kansas Public School Funding Coalition and are seeking legal counsel, they announced in a Wednesday press release. The coalition aims to secure adequate general and special education funding for every Kansas public school.

Special education and disability groups pushed back against the plan to drop certain data collections tracking racial disparities.

For the first time in more than two decades, federal officials are moving forward with plans to find out just how much schools across the nation are spending on students with disabilities.

The U.S. Department of Education is taking steps to green-light what’s known as the National Special Education Spending Study.

Double Olympic champion Jade Jones believes being diagnosed with ADHD helped her to make sense of her struggles – as well as her greatest successes.

“You can gamble on your phone. The ads are all over Instagram. It’s everywhere and it takes effort to get away from it. And when you combine the instant dopamine rush with sports, it’s different. There’s something about sports that make people feel like Gladiators.”

“I felt like a fraud because I wrote an entire book on how to support someone with ADHD yet never had the courage to raise my hand and ask the question for myself. I felt grief for all the years believing my struggles were character flaws. I felt some anger on behalf of all the women like me whole were simply… missed.”

More people are relying on social media – such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Reddit – to learn about mental health conditions and to interact with people who have shared experiences.

These aren’t only long-familiar disorders such as depression, anxiety and schizophrenia. They also include conditions often placed under the “neurodivergent” umbrella such as autism, ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder), Tourette syndrome and dyslexia.

We wanted to explore how social media platforms shape how we understand mental health. Our findings have important implications for how people make sense of, and seek help for, mental health problems.

“Asking for support can be difficult for males, as societal messages equate needing help with a diminished sense of masculinity.”

Menopause can be challenging for many women, but for those with ADHD, the experience can often feel like life is completely unravelling. For some women in their 40s, 50s and 60s it can also be the first time they realize they may have ADHD, as fluctuating hormones amplify their challenges with sleep, mood, attention and overwhelm. GP and Menopause expert Dr Helen Wall joined Anita to talk about her new book Menopause and ADHD, which aims to debunk some of the myths and support women navigating the combination.

Explore the science, expert insight, lived experiences, and camaraderie that surrounds women with ADHD.

Many adults with ADHD who were bullied in childhood find that the patterns extend into the workplace and personal relationships. Learn how to interrupt the cycle here.

Perimenopause is highly impairing for women with ADHD, who experience more severe symptoms and at an earlier age than neurotypical women.

Edward Kang’s RetinaMind analyzes patients’ retinal images and accurately diagnoses neurodevelopmental disorders 89 percent of the time.

My patients often ask if I think they have a particular psychiatric diagnosis, such as bipolar disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or autism. The way they ask suggests they believe that as their psychiatrist, I can identify hidden attributes in their brains, much in the same way one of my physician colleagues might diagnose a patient with a genetic mutation or bacterial infection.

The reality is messier and, in some ways, unsettling

For many autistic people and parents navigating a child’s care, getting a diagnosis feels like finally having an answer. But for a significant number of people, that answer is incomplete. Autism frequently co-occurs with ADHD, anxiety, depression, and other conditions, and when one piece of the picture is identified while others are missed, the effects can be profound.

This Mental Health Awareness Month, it’s worth exploring what happens when the full picture isn’t seen. Understanding autism signs and symptoms in the context of co-occurring conditions is a meaningful first step, because the overlap is much more common than many people realize.

District leaders had recently confirmed they would consolidate students with disabilities into certain campuses beginning next school year.

As Mayor Zohran Mamdani scrambles to plug a multi-billion dollar budget gap, his administration is looking more closely at the money New York City spends on private school tuition for students with disabilities.

Researchers identified a more severe presentation of the condition marked by emotional dysregulation.

More than a third of the federal government’s education research budget — an estimated $289 million — could go unspent this year, according to an analysis by an advocacy group.  

The proportion of people diagnosed with and treated for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is growing. Prescription rates have increased 11-fold in 20 years.

But the growth isn’t uniform across the country. This week, ABC’s Four Corners found higher rates of ADHD prescribing in some regions, while other areas were much lower, suggesting ADHD was being missed.

Students in Vanessa Malzone’s third grade class at Sheehy Elementary put on their headsets and log into a reading tutoring program a few times a week. They watch videos and read out loud from worksheets into their laptops. On the other side of the screen: college students from across the country, connected by video, hoping to build a connection and confidence in reading. At Sheehy, which, like some other schools, has struggled with third grade reading test scores, school leaders say they’ve seen payoff from the partnership through the Teach for America Ignite Fellowship. The program pairs students with real-time tutors during school hours.

While there are many great brain-based learning strategies out there, students may not fully buy into these strategies if they don’t understand why they work. And for many students, no one has ever explained that why. These four hands-on activities guide students to explore how their attention and memory function and how that impacts learning.

A first-of-its-kind study has found that early intervention services — which can include occupational, physical and speech therapies, among others — improve children’s test scores, even years down the road. The study, conducted jointly by researchers at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the New York City Health Department, showed that children who received the services between birth and age 3 outperformed similar peers on third grade reading and math tests. Early intervention services are intended for children with disabilities, developmental delays or those who are at risk of them.

With her most recent announcement that the Treasury Department would take over student loans, Education Secretary Linda McMahon is reversing history and redistributing her department’s major responsibilities across the federal government. K-12 programs are going to the Labor Department, while the Department of Health and Human Services is expected to absorb special education. McMahon dismisses her staff’s oversight functions as unnecessarily burdensome and says parceling out the department’s functions will reduce red tape. But others say those rules ensure that schools spend the money the way Congress intended.

[There is] a widespread way of thinking about intervention that if students didn’t learn the material well in class, they might benefit from new ways of approaching it or different explanations of the same concepts. But a new study suggests the opposite was true, that teachers and tutors may have inadvertently confused students by, for example, teaching different letter sounds in different orders or referring to the “magic e” in one setting and the “silent e” in another. The findings are important as school districts look for ways to make tutoring more effective with limited dollars. 

When you finally receive a neurodevelopmental diagnosis that reflects your strengths and the challenges you face, it can be life-changing.

But for people with both autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) – known colloquially as AuDHD – getting the right diagnosis can be difficult.

People with AuDHD (pronounced awe-D-H-D) often find their traits and experiences don’t always neatly fit into either category. Sometimes the two conditions contradict each other and appear to act in opposite ways. Other times they exacerbate or increase a trait or difficulty.

This can delay diagnosis and support.

It’s long been assumed that the disorder primarily affects young boys, leading to the widespread misdiagnosis of women who can face significant challenges as a result. But that may be changing.

New brain research sheds light on the different guises of ADHD.

ADHD is characterized by a list of 18 symptoms equally divided between the Inattentive and Hyperactive/Impulsive groupings. They yield different presentations: Predominantly Inattentive, Predominantly Hyperactive/Impulsive, or Combined. They used to be called subtypes, but there is so much variability in how ADHD presents across individuals that the groupings have been recognized to be extremely heterogeneous.

The former Acting Director and Deputy Director of the NIMH, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine, and longtime ADDitude contributor died on April 7 at age 92.

Increasingly, we’re realizing that people’s brains work differently.

The French startup has created a new way to help individuals with dyslexia, according to the company.

Can video games really help children learn to focus?

Whether you’re seeking an ADHD diagnosis or advocating for better treatment, these three webinar takeaways will help you respond effectively to a dismissive doctor.

Understand how the “ADHD doom loop” impacts the circadian clock, and practical ways to protect your sleep.

Everyone has a unique “neurodiverse” learning profile and brain.

Two children sit in different schools. Both struggle to read. Both have similar low scores on national tests. But while one gets a diagnosis of specific learning difficulties and a package of support, the other is left to fall behind.

My colleagues and I have carried out new research analysing the records of around 540,000 primary school children across England. It reveals a troubling picture.

President Donald Trump wants to stop directing federal funds to the nation’s university centers on developmental disabilities, multiple Individuals with Disabilities Education Act programs and much more.

ADHD isn’t merely a dysfunction. It’s best understood as an impulsive motivational drive for novel information.

“The question is not whether ADHD exists across communities. It is whether our assessment systems are reflective enough, and flexible enough, to see it.”

Reading speed and spelling accuracy are not reliable measures of intelligence or leadership ability. Leadership depends on big-picture thinking, pattern recognition, and decision-making under uncertainty. Many individuals with dyslexia show strengths in systems thinking, narrative reasoning, and resilience.