Question: Melatonin for ADHD?
11 Jan, 08 | by Bob Phillips
Does melatonin improve sleep pattern in children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder?
Adam is an 8 year old boy with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) who you see with his mother in your paediatric outpatient clinic. She explains that life is being made increasingly stressful for the whole family as Adam is having difficulty getting off to sleep. It often takes him several hours to calm down and go to sleep, and the day after he gets angry and seems to be tired all the time. She has seen a recent TV programme that suggested that melatonin may be helpful for children with ADHD.
Are the television producers correct? If melatonin is prescribed for Adam, will it be harmful or helpful in improving his sleep?
It’s a great sport of journalists and commentators to look back at predictions of the future from decades past, and see just how badly they have gone astray. We do this as clinicians too, but with a sense of guilt … looking back to an unexpected relapse of a low-risk tumour, or a fulminant hepatitis that presented with mild nausea, and ask ‘Why didn’t we predict that?”. 