Andrew Reding

BACKGROUND: Misconceptions about ADHD stigmatize affected people, reduce credibility of providers, and prevent/delay treatment. To challenge misconceptions, we curated findings with strong evidence base. METHODS: We reviewed studies with more than 2000 participants or meta-analyses from five or more studies or 2000 or more participants. We excluded meta-analyses that did not assess publication bias, except for meta-analyses of prevalence. For network meta-analyses we required comparison adjusted funnel plots. We excluded treatment studies with waiting-list or treatment as usual controls. From this literature, we extracted evidence-based assertions about the disorder. RESULTS: We generated 208 empirically supported statements about ADHD. The status of the included statements as empirically supported is approved by 80 authors from 27 countries and 6 continents. The contents of the manuscript are endorsed by 366 people who have read this document and agree with its contents. CONCLUSIONS: Many findings in ADHD are supported by meta-analysis. These allow for firm statements about the nature, course, outcome causes, and treatments for disorders that are useful for reducing misconceptions and stigma.

At 8 a.m. on July 4, 1986, a Nicaraguan State Security vehicle drove up to the residence of Bishop Pablo Antonio Vega in the city of Juigalpa, a regional capital and see of the Diocese of Juigalpa and Rio Sanjuan. The officers instructed Vega, the 56-year-old vice president of the Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference, to accompany them. They then drove 80 miles west to Managua where the bishop was transferred to a waiting helicopter and flown to the Honduran border. At 10:30 a.m. he was turned over to Honduran authorities at La Fraternidad. In a press release issued that morning beneath the title "Vega does not deserve to be Nicaraguan," the office of President Daniel Ortega Saavedra announced the bishop's indefinite expulsion for his "oft-repeated antipatriotic attitude," adding that "in Honduras he will have the opportunity to be closer to 'his brothers,' who are likewise Reagan's brothers: the criminal somocista forces."This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The November 1990 meetings between Presidents George Bush and Carlos Salinas de Gortari in Monterrey reflected web of contradictions that enmesh U.S.-Mexican relations today. Only a week earlier, Mexico's longruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) had announced an implausible clean sweep of all 34 legislative districts in state of Mexico, where only two years before opposition leader Cuauhtemoc Cardenas had beaten Salinas in a two-to-one landslide. The elections in state of Mexico had been first test of Salinas administration's much-vaunted electoral reform legislation,1 and even ordinarily sympathetic foreign observers quickly concluded that Salinas had flunked. According to New York Times, the huge pluralities, 90 percent in many cases, suggested] systematic electoral fraud/'2 Across Atlantic, Economist argued that Mr. Salinas cannot separate political from economic reform. If he is truly trying to do both at once, he would do well to encourage international supervision of elections that he says are no longer fraudulent.3 Curiously, President Bush, who had earlier insisted on free elections in Nicaragua and had used fraudulent 1989 Panamanian elections as a justification for invasion, kept his silence on Mexico's electoral fraud. Moreover, he chose that critical moment to reemphasize his close ties with President Salinas and to reward Mexican government with a $5.6 billion loan guaranteed by Export-Import Bank. Bush also used Monterrey summit to restate his proposal for a hemispheric free-trade zone, beginning with a free-trade agreement with Salinas's Mexico that would serve as both model and gateway for Latin American economic integration with United States.