About

Vision

Our vision is to improve the lives of adults and families with ADHD.

Mission

Our mission is to advance the accuracy of diagnosis and effectiveness of treatment for people with ADHD through patient care, research, education, and advocacy.

My ADHD Foundation was established to fund and disseminate the world’s literature on ADHD for healthcare providers, patients, families, and policy makers. A current glaring omission in the United States is the absence of research-based guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD in adults. While the international ADHD research community has published adult ADHD diagnostic and treatment guidelines, adult ADHD experts in the U.S. have yet to publish such guidelines. Without such guidelines, the field remains a hodgepodge of approaches.

With clinical practice guidelines, “tool kits” composed for symptom screeners, educational material for patients, and diagnostic/treatment formulations for clinicians can be developed for specific health care specialties. For example, the “tool kits” that a neurologist would need may be different from what a clinical psychologist would use. A primary care provider needs a different “tool kit” from an adult psychiatrist.

The development of health care specialty ADHD “tool kits” becomes an additional advancement in training a diverse group of health care professionals from whom patients seek care. Our organization will consider extending our mission to support the endeavor of “tool kit” development and dissemination.

My ADHD Foundation plans to provide support, funding, and collaboration with national and international adult ADHD experts (clinicians, researchers, patient/family advocates, social influencers, and policymakers) to:

Heighten public awareness of clinical practice guidelines, expert consensus, and “best practices” by working with the media, which informs the public.
Provide continuing medical education presentations around the country to clinicians about the importance of evidence-based medicine for adults with ADHD.
Combat misinformation about ADHD and provide information on the diagnostic process for an accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment.
Promote the collaborative patient-clinician relationship in determining the best course of treatment for an individual patient.
Highlight the concerns of the FDA, DEA, and HHS about inappropriate controlled drug stimulant prescriptions to those patients who received inadequate evaluations, inaccurate diagnoses, and inappropriate and unnecessary ADHD prescriptions.
Disseminate research, clinical evidence, and useful tools for adult ADHD diagnosis and treatment to health care providers, patients and families, insurers, policymakers, advocacy organizations, and the general public.

The eventual publication of a set of adult ADHD guidelines in the U.S. and the development of specialty “tool kits” will ensure that patients receive consistently high-quality care from their providers across the United States, regardless of where treatment is provided. The increased use of telemedicine for mental health services demonstrates the tremendous need of people around the country. While access to care has been increased by telemedicine, it has complicated the delivery of mental health care, especially in adult ADHD.

Regardless of where care is delivered (in-person, online, on the phone, etc.), the principles of treatment should follow standards of clinical practice and ethical guidelines established by the American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, and other professional healthcare provider organizations.

My ADHD Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with donations directed to a donor-advised fund.

About David W. Goodman, MD

David W. Goodman, M.D. is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the New York State University in Syracuse. He is also Director of the Adult Attention Deficit Disorder Center of Maryland and Director of Suburban Psychiatric Associates, LLC. After completing his psychiatric residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, he has continued to teach psychiatric residents at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine for 35+ years.

Dr. Goodman has presented over 750 lectures nationally and internationally to primary care physicians, psychiatrists, medical specialists, and the public. His invited lectures have been featured at the World Federation for ADHD in Amsterdam and Prague, the Australasian ADHD Professionals Association in Sydney, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington, DC, the Canadian ADHD Resource Alliance in Toronto, and the American Professional Society for ADHD and Related Disorders in Washington, DC., and the American Academy of Geriatric Psychiatry, Atlanta.

His psychiatric commentary has been featured on national (ABC World News, CNN Anderson Cooper 360, ESPN Sports Center, National Public Radio) and regional television around the country, PBS and national affiliate stations, national magazines (U.S. News and World Report, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Weekend Magazine, Boston Globe, BusinessWeek, The Atlantic Magazine, Bloomberg.com) and radio interviews around the country.

Dr. Goodman has been an ADHD consultant for Major League Baseball and the World Anti-Doping Agency and is now a consultant to the National Football League. As a consultant, he has evaluated and treated athletes from Division I colleges to Olympic-level athletes. He was a member of the executive committee for the American Professional Society for ADHD and Related Disorders (APSARD), and a former national board member now a consultant to the Children and Adults with ADHD Association (CHADD).

Dr. Goodman has been a Principal Investigator for multi-site Phase II and III drug trials for the treatment of adult Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Dr. Goodman is the lead author of the largest adult ADHD trial published and the lead author of the largest survey assessment of physician clinical practice for adults with ADHD. He has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and authored four book chapters and The Black Book of ADHD. He has serves as a prepublication peer reviewer for several national and international psychiatric journals.

As you see, Dr. David W. Goodman has committed his entire professional career to advance the education, advocacy, and treatment of ADHD in adults. After treating thousands of patients, he and his colleagues want to address the unmet and critical need for published U.S. evidence-based guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD in adults in this country. With donation, you will help us accomplish this critical goal.

Story

While decades of national and international research have accumulated, health care providers and patients still have difficulty determining the most accurate way to make a diagnosis of ADHD in an adult. Diagnostic confusion leads to ineffective treatments and inappropriate prescriptions.

After years of discussion amongst the adult ADHD experts in the United States, our foundation is offering the funding and collaborative support to projects that seek to establish a standard of care for the accurate diagnosis and effective treatments.

Our Impact

It is estimated that 9 million adults in the U.S. have ADHD and only 25% are being currently treated. Millions of adults with a very treatable disorder go unrecognized by themselves, family members, employers, and health care providers. The costly consequences of abbreviated education, arrests, drug/alcohol use, car accidents, unplanned pregnancies, divorce, unstable employment, financial underachievement, and higher health care costs are well documented by research around the world.

Without United States adult ADHD guidelines providing guidance to health care providers, the field remains adrift with ineffective and unproven approaches. The publication of adult ADHD guidelines will ensure that patients receive a consistently high quality of care from their providers across the United States regardless of where treatment is provided.