Hallowell Center

Be very careful with this one. Hallowell is a strong advocate for ADD/​ADHD and for using stimulants to treat. I was warned that the Center diagnoses 100 out of every 25 cases of ADD. Indeed, when the diagnosis (inevitably?) came, it seemed very shaky to me.
My son was treated there with stimulants for depression and stimulants for ADHD (to me he seemed neither depressed nor hyperactive, but it takes two to tango…). He subsequently had a psychotic episode, and the doctors at the NH state hospital instructed us to get him off all the stimulants. This wasn’t achieved.
He then had another psychotic episode, and the doctors at the state hospital in MA questioned the add diagnosis and warned us that the stimulants could well have preceeded the break in the presence of undiagnosed bipolar disorder. They put him on and off stimulants to try to confirm this, and the experiments clearly suggested that he should not be using them.
This is squishy stuff. I don’t know exactly what was going on with my son and don’t «blame» the Hallowell Center. However, this point of over-​diagnosis is important. The treatments so strongly advocated by Hallowell can be explosive in the wrong situation.