Vision therapy has been considered a controversial treatment for individuals with ADHD but more and more research is showing that there is in fact a connection between vision problems and ADHD. In early 2009 a group of Optometrists in England evaluated several programs claiming to improve visual, mental, neurological, academic, and behavioral problems. They concluded that patients with convergence insufficiency were improved by vision therapy.

Children diagnosed with ADHD have a three fold increase in the incidence of Convergence Insufficiency as compared to controls and a two fold increase in the incidence of visual tracking problems. This may be related to a hyper responsive superior colliculus. The superior colliculus (SC) is a brain structure which is involved in the control of distractibility and of eye and head movements. Some researchers have proposed that in ADHD, the colliculus is hyper-responsive, which causes inattention and distractibility. Could the hyper-responsive SC also be causing the problems with convergence and tracking??

When my son who has primarily inattentive ADHD was seven years old we took him to an Occupational Therapist (OT).  His teachers were concerned because his handwriting was horrible and his gross motor skills were not great. They wanted me to make certain that these problems were not related to an OT issue. The OT spent about 1 minute with him and then came to tell me that he had something ‘wrong’ going on with his eyes. She felt that his handwriting problems and gross motor problems were related to a convergence insufficiency and referred us to a Developmental Optometrist.

The Optometrist gave him a very thorough evaluation and determined that he had tracking delays and convergence problems. He also reported that my son was cross dominant. This happens, according to the optometrist, when you are right handed but your dominant eye is the left eye (or vice versa).

My son did not have dyslexia, according to the Optometrist, but it was his cross dominance and convergence issues that caused him to write the number ’9′ when he meant to write a ‘P’ and to write the number ’3′ when he meant to write an ‘E’. The evaluation took 4 hours and resulted in our getting a mountain of exercises that we had to do with him at home.

The exercises involved tracking letters in a newspaper, reading from materials that were near and far in a rapid manner, and what I call eye aerobics, where he had to look up, down, and all around, over and over again

After about 3 months of doing this. His tracking was faster, his letter reversals were much better, and his handwriting was better. I believe that it is possible that, just like with biofeedback, we can train our eyes to perform better. If there is an eye/attention connection maybe training the eye could in some way help with attention.

Some folks have proposed that the increased attention which results from taking a stimulant is cause by the depression of activity in the colliculus. Could there possibly be some visual therapy that would, like stimulants, calm that hyper-responsive colliculus and in the process increase out attention? Current ophthalmology research may provide answers to some of these questions.

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