ADHD! So what? Under this motto, the concept of "Skating instead of Ritalin" was changed slightly in 2018. In March 2018, a new 4-month workshop series with a total of 30 children started in 2 courses between 8-14 years. After many positive experiences and very good feedback in recent years, we now want to go one step further. In cooperation with the Westfälische Wilhelmsuniversität Münster and the resident Institute for Sports Science we want to prove the positive effect of skateboarding. The University in the form of Prof. Dr. med. Heiko Wagner, Prof. Dr. med. Patricia Ohrmann and Dr. Christiane Bohn carries out the scientific investigation. skate-aid is responsible for the implementation of the sportively and pedagogically professional supervised workshops. These take place over a period of 16 appointments, one every week. The kids get a complete set, consisting of skateboard, helmet and safety equipment  for this period and can use it outside of the workshops too.
In 2019, there will be two more workshop series accompanied by the University team. Afterwards, enough data will have been collected to be able to present the first results of the study by the end of 2019.

History

In 2012, the program "Skating instead of Ritalin" was launched under the leadership of Dr. Thomas Dirksen and Alexander Krick. The offer is aimed at kids and teenagers with behavioral problems or who have been diagnosed with a behavioral disorder. They were all treated in the practice of Dr. Dirksen & Franke in Münster and were specifically proposed by the treating physicians for the program. The aim is to offer kids and teenagers an alternative in the therapy. In the 10 skateboard workshops, they’ve learned to concentrate naturally over a longer period of time under expert guidance. In addition, their frustration tolerance is increased and they enjoy physical exercise. Ideally – it happened already to several participants -the therapy, which also includes skateboarding, can be continued without the use of Ritalin. 

The project was initiated by skate-aid e.V. München. As of 2016, it was implemented by the Titus Dittman Foundation. Since May 2019, the project is carried out by skate-aid international e.V.

UPDATE:

Under the motto „ADHD! So what?!“ our project ‘Skating-instead of-Ritalin’ went into the next round in September 2022! The requests for free participant places were once again immense, which confirms to us the meaningfulness of this project. We were able to offer two courses for 40 kids in spring and from September a total of 45 kids came together in two courses in Münster’s Skaters Palace. There are 12 dates per course. Each of the kids received a brand-new skate-aid skateboard, as well as safety-gear and helmet as a donation to create optimal and equal conditions for each participant. By the way, in the editorial of this issue you can learn the reason why skateboarding is so good as a therapy for an ADHD diagnosis and why this project is so successful. The project is again accompanied by the Sports Medicine Institute in Münster under the leadership of Dr. Christiane Bohn, who already highlighted the scientific added value of this project last year. The project and the associated study will run through the first quarter of 2023 – we’re already very excited about the results and thank the Sports Medicine Institute for the support