Best meds for attention issues | ADHD Information

Tenex can work for some for attention, but it is not as good as a stimulant. My youngest has been on tenex (guanfacine alone) and it worked, but not quite enough. The combo of stimulant and tenex was found in studies to be superior to either alone. Using tenex can allow use of a lower dose of stimulant and ease side effects of the stimulant and the stimulant can ease potential daytime sleepiness due to tenex.

There is a very long tenex thread with lots of links to references and articles that you might want to read.

http://www.adhdnews.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=24770& KW=tenex

We may be going down the route of adding another medication to the 1/2 mg tenex for our 7 year old boy.

I am very concerned about rebounds or bad changes in my son's behavior due to a stimulant. Also the loss of appetite which he has a great one now.

Anyway - does anyone have child on tenex? Should I discuss with doctor about upping that dosage? Do you think that would do well for attention span. Basically, he gets easily distracted - no major impulse issues now except staying on task.

Or is there another medication out that works well with tenex for distractability issues?

We are taking son to get a full evaluation at the end of this month with a new doctor (child psh) who specializes in older adopted children (which my son is) and I want to be fully prepared to ask a ton of questions!


Thanks Vicki -
When a child is on Concerta and Tenex do they have weight issues like loss of appetite? I read some of the thread  and you mentioned and it seemed that you need to keep the Concerta on a low dose is that for issues like that?

It depends on the child. On stimulants alone, appetite seems to recover at about 8-9 months. Tenex can stop weight loss and even help with gain for kids on a stimulant. It can also let a lower dose of stim be used if the stim is causing unacceptable weight loss, tics, sleep issues or irritability. It is very individual. Many docs will use tenex as a first med before moving to more serious meds like risperdal, etc for mood issues.

For my youngest, we started with concerta and she lost several pounds. She is thin and could not afford the weight loss so we could not go up to a fully effective dose of concerta. That is when the guanfacine was added, to augment the lower than optimal concerta. Since that time we changed to focalin which can have less weight issues and have tried without stimulant (guanfacine alone); which is not good enough for school but fine for summer.

My youngest takes 2mg tenex am, 2mg at bedtime and can take a 1/2 dose after school if she is going to have a socially challenging evening.

newmom, we are seeing no rebound from Daytrana and we did see it with all the other long acting meds. Although some were more tolerable, than others (like silliness) , but Daytrana is very smooth. Appetite stinks though. GREAT for focus and impulsiveness.

Appetite was horrible on Concerta, but not bad on Ritalin LA.