The Chesapeake Approach to Treating Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

We believe that ADHD is less a “disorder,” than a type of brain, a brain with some traits that present challenges combined with other traits that hold tremendous promise when the challenges of ADHD are well-managed.

We offer neuropsychological and psychological testing to carefully assess ADHD as well as the range of co-occurring conditions. We offer individual, family, group and couples therapy, ADHD coaching and professional organizing. Our focus is on helping our clients and their families view ADHD through a strength-based, solution-focused lens, working with each client to help them reach their potential by:

• Teaching those with ADHD to view themselves from a positive, strength-based perspective, helping our clients develop strategies to meet the challenges of ADHD, while identifying and focusing on their strengths, their interests and their potential for success.
• Creating an ADHD-friendly environment— a critical element of living well with an ADHD brain is a good match between the individual and his environment
  • Home environment
  • Social environment
  • School environment
  • Work environment
• Optimizing brain functioning through building healthy habits — we teach our clients to optimize brain functioning through developing consistent healthy daily habits focused on nutrition, nutritional supplements, sleep, meditation and aerobic exercise
• Improving executive functioning skills — teaching our clients to develop habits that support good time management skills, organizational skills, ability to initiate and complete tasks, reduce forgetfulness and improve working memory through the use of tools and structured routines
• Learning stress management techniques — through setting realistic goals, reducing overload, mindfulness meditation, and other relaxation strategies
• Improving social interaction and communication skills — we find that structured communication is particularly helpful for those with ADHD, teaching clients to wait, listen, empathize and problem-solve. These patterns are helpful both to couples and to parent-child communications as well. These techniques can also be transferred to communication in the workplace, resulting in more positive, collaborative interactions at work.
• Teaching practical, effective parenting skills — parents with ADHD often have children with ADHD, leading to a doubly-challenging situation for parent and child. We teach parenting approaches that are particularly effective to reduce parent/child conflicts and increase positive interactions at home
• Addressing co-occurring conditions such as anxiety and depression so that they don’t interfere with feeling and functioning well
• Helping clients make ADHD-friendly choices — an important key to success with ADHD is making good choices — regarding school, college, friends, romantic partners, career direction and lifestyle.
• Providing support and structure to help our clients and their families follow through with our life-changing recommendations
• Structuring the therapy session to accommodate the needs of each client through approaches such client note-taking during the session, therapist review of prior session, guiding the client to stay on-track during the session, reviewing priorities to discuss during the session, assigning “homework” to focus on between sessions, providing accountability for “homework,” and helping the client understand his particular roadblocks to change and how best to deal with them, always interpreting issues from a viewpoint of neurodiversity rather than judgment or blame.

We work with people of all ages, from preschool years through retirement years, and find that our approaches are very effective in helping people of any age to live satisfying lives.