Zonked,
Although I think that determining the efficacy, tolerability, and safety of various medications for different mental health conditions is something that absolutely must be done and that data on these measures should guide initial treatment decisions perhaps more than anything else, evidence on how responsive somebody else with a mental health condition that's the same as mine or similar to mine is to a particular treatment only means so much to me. I say this mostly because I've tried so many mental health treatments that are perhaps rightfully regarded as evidence based only to experience either no long-term improvement or a worsening of symptoms. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely better to have data that can give us some idea as to how helpful a treatment might be for us, but I'm just saying that the best evidence on how helpful a treatment is for a particular person is to see how that person -- and only that person -- is affected by the treatment in question. To me, it doesn't matter if a particular patient with a given mental health condition (let's say ADHD) is the only person with that condition who's responsive to that treatment. If a patient finds a particular treatment to be immensely helpful, that, at least to me, should be a lot more important than how effective the treatment is in a larger group of individuals who share the same diagnosis.
Basically what I'm saying is that it matters less to me whether the doctor that you spoke to recently was correct in what he said about the evidence associated with adult stimulant use than it does that Focalin seems to be an extremely beneficial part of your treatment regimen. It's quite unfortunate that one of the medications that you definitely seem to benefit from has so much stigma attached to its use, and I hope that the next treatment provider that you'll find yourself working with will be sufficiently receptive to your mental health needs.
In the meantime, I wish you all the luck possible with taking the best care of yourself that you possibly can, at least with all things being considered.
Tomatheus
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