Katherine Ellison’s son was 12 when he was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.
“He was getting into fights. He wasn’t doing his homework. He was being very difficult with his little brother. And he was just melting down day after day,” Ellison says. “So I decided to devote a year to trying out different approaches to see if we could make it any better.”
In recent years, more people have been trying an alternative approach called neurofeedback, a type of therapy intended to teach the brain to stay calm and focused. Neurofeedback is expensive, time consuming and still scientifically unproved. But, there’s growing evidence that it can help.