Marina Ter-Stepanian

Effectiveness of a Therapeutic Summer Camp for Children With ADHD Phase I Clinical Intervention Trial

Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a 2-week therapeutic summer day camp for children with ADHD, which included a social skills training program and parent psychoeducation and training program. This was an open-label, nonrandomized Phase I Clinical Intervention Trial. Method: Parents completed the Weiss Functional Impairment Rating Scale (WFIRS) and the Conners’ Global Index–Parent Version (CGI-P), and children completed the Index of Peer Relations (IPR). All questionnaires were completed prior to the camp and 3 weeks after starting school. A total of 33 children who attended the camp were compared with a group of 15 children with ADHD who did not attend camp. Results: CGI-P, IPR, and WFIRS significantly improved in the group that attended the camp but not in the control group. Effect sizes were between 0.7 and 1.6. Conclusion: The therapeutic summer day camp is effective in improving ADHD symptoms, peer relationships, and overall functioning of children.

Factor structure of the restricted academic situation scale: implications for ADHD.

Background: To study the factor structure of the Restricted Academic Situation Scale (RASS), a psychometric tool used to assess behavior in children with ADHD, 117 boys and 21 girls meeting Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; DSM-IV) criteria for ADHD and aged between 6 and 12 years were recruited. Assessments were carried out before and 65 min after the administration of either a placebo or 0.25 mg/kg of methylphenidate. Placebo and methylphenidate were each administered according to a double-blind placebo-controlled crossover design. Results: Principal component analysis, followed by a confirmatory maximum likelihood factor analysis, revealed two main factors for the RASS, task disengagement (TD) and motor activation (MA). Only TD was inversely correlated with age, indicating that TD and MA may be differentially modulated during development. Conclusions: MA and TD are distinct traits of ADHD. It may be important to consider them separately when conducting studies on ADHD. (J. of Att. Dis. 2009; 12(5) 442-448)

Dissecting genetic cross-talk between ADHD and other neurodevelopmental disorders: Evidence from behavioural, pharmacological and brain imaging investigations

Several epidemiological and genetic studies have provided evidence of an overlap between neurodevelopmental disorders. However, the details of the etiological pathways remain to be elucidated. In this study, we garnered the findings of previous GWAS, conducted with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. We conducted an exploratory study to examine the association between these SNPs and quantitative clinical/ behavioural/ cognitive/ structural brain parameters, as well as response to treatment with a fixed dose of methylphenidate, in a relatively large sample of children with ADHD. Family-based association tests were conducted with nine tag SNPs with 602 nuclear families. In addition, structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) was conducted in a subset of children with ADHD (n = 76). Of the 9 tag SNPs examined, rs1602565 showed a significant association with ADHD, several dimensional measures and response to treatment. An association was also observed between rs1006737 (CACNA1C) and performance IQ. In addition, significant reductions in cortical thickness measurements were observed with the risk allele in rs1006737. These results provide preliminary evidence for putative shared genetic vulnerability between childhood ADHD and other neurodevelopmental disorders.