Most professionals will rightly tell you that Pathological Demand Avoidance is a lifelong condition (or different way of being) that can’t be resolved with medication.

Some autism advocates will ask why would you want to medicate to remove someone’s unique differences anyway.

However, after speaking to numerous top medical consultants about our PDA child, and after trying various synthetic and herbal and homeopathic remedies with varying levels of success, we have concluded that medication can be helpful, especially anxiety reducing medication.

Below is a summary of our findings, including pitfalls to avoid.

Beware of co-occurring conditions such as ADHD

Where comorbid ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) is present alongside PDA, beware of treating the ADHD first, in fact our recommendation out of our own experience would be to avoid treating the ADHD altogether.

When a PDA person also has ADHD, the ADHD can be a bit of a lifeline at times, because they can sometimes be distracted away from anxiety inducing demands when a meltdown is pending.

We were given advice by a top medical professional to avoid medicating for ADHD until the sky-high anxiety associated with PDA was well under control, and while we headed this initially, we later at one point thoughtlessly tried out a natural herbal remedy for ADHD (L-Tyrosine). The result was a miserable day that alternated between stressy behaviour and prolonged full meltdowns – the L-Tyrosine seemed to help our PDA child focus on the stress points, and seemed to remove his ability to move away from them in spite of all our best efforts at PDA-friendly approaches.