ADHDFamilies

The North Carolina company Play Attention claims that the have created a game that will help persons affected by ADHD have better attention spans. These “feedback driven educational systems” utilize a bicycle-like helmet that measures brainwave activities and allows the wearer to control video games with their thoughts.

the official description of the syste, from the developer’s website is:

Play Attention can be used in the comfort of your home. It is powerful learning system that uses a high-tech helmet to read brain signals indicative of focus or concentration. These brain signals control our computer games. Your mind becomes the mouse or joystick! These games not only teach you to improve focus, but also to ignore distractions, develop memory skills, finish tasks, and become organized. These skills can improve school work, improve self-esteem, and make life at home much happier.

While the company seems to lean towards the side of “Bad Parenting contributing greatly to the severity of ADHD symptoms”, this type of technology is very exciting, as it opens new doorways into the study and treatment of ADD, ADHD and other attention-disrupting diseases. I’m looking forward to researching this topic in greater detail. Their website is chock-full of information and goes far more in-depth than I have time for today, but I am about to pass the information along to a few other sites that will very likely want to cover this topic as well.

Alicia Sparks of Mental Health Notes has awarded what she calls the A.S.S. Award (for Mental Health Notes’ Abusive Supporter of Stigma).  Miss Sparks is granting this award based on an article published by TMZ.com titled Are Dairy and Milk Making Brit Split?, in which the author makes more than one rather provocative and supposedly cute “quips” about bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in connection with claims from PETA that certain cases of the condition may be worsened by the consumption of meat and dairy products.

Regardless of whether the research from PETA is valid or whether I agree with their standpoints, I do agree with miss Sparks that the use of grade-school comparisons and underhanded jokes aimed at people with a mental illness (or suspected of having one, in the case of the troubled Brittney Spears), is simply reprehensible.

Miss Sparks, I applaud you!  you may add our vote of appreciation, and add the ADHDFamilies J.A.C.K. Award to the list of accolades given. (for Just Another Circulator of Misinformed Krud.)

I suppose that makes this particular author a recipient of a combined J.A.C.K. and A.S.S. Award, or just a J.A.C.K.-A.S.S.