Other approaches
Reviewed: [date]
Medication is one part of ADHD treatment and, for many people, not the most important part on its own. This page covers two things that sit outside the two main medication categories: prescribing outside a drug's primary approval, and the non-medication support that does work medication cannot.
Prescribing outside a medication's primary approval
Some medications are prescribed for ADHD even though ADHD is not the condition they were originally approved to treat. This is usually called off-label prescribing. It is legal, common across all of medicine, and often well supported by published evidence — a clinician is permitted to use their judgement about what will help a particular patient.
What it is not is a menu option. Narry does not advertise, recommend or offer any medication for a use it isn't approved for. If a clinician who has evaluated you raises one, they will explain what the evidence does and does not show, what the risks are, and why they think it fits your situation. That conversation belongs in your appointment, not on a marketing page — which is why this section names no medications.
If a service anywhere offers to sell you a specific off-label medication before a clinician has assessed you, that is a reason to close the tab.
Treating what sits alongside ADHD
ADHD frequently arrives with company. Anxiety, depression, sleep disorders and substance use are all more common in adults with ADHD than in the general population. Sometimes what looks like treatment-resistant ADHD is untreated sleep apnoea, an anxiety disorder, or a thyroid problem.
Treating the co-occurring condition — occasionally before touching ADHD at all — is a normal and often necessary sequence. It can be frustrating when you came in wanting one thing and are pointed at another, but it is usually the faster route to feeling better.
Non-medication support
Medication can improve attention regulation. It cannot build a system for remembering appointments, undo years of believing you were lazy, or repair a relationship strained by missed commitments. That work is done elsewhere.
- Cognitive behavioural therapy adapted for ADHD. The best-evidenced non-medication treatment for adults, focused on planning, procrastination and the beliefs that build up after years of struggling.
- ADHD coaching. Practical and structural rather than therapeutic — systems, routines, accountability. Not a regulated profession, so credentials vary considerably.
- Sleep. Chronic sleep deprivation produces symptoms nearly indistinguishable from ADHD, and worsens real ADHD substantially. Often the highest-value change available.
- Exercise. Modest but real evidence for improvements in attention and executive function, and it helps the co-occurring anxiety and low mood too.
- Workplace or academic accommodations. A formal diagnosis can unlock adjustments that change your day more than a dose increase would.
What Narry does and doesn't cover
Narry provides assessment, diagnosis and medication management. We do not provide therapy or coaching. Where your clinician thinks you would benefit from either, they will say so and point you in the right direction — and for some patients, the plan they recommend involves no medication at all.