Adult ADHD and Review of Literature to Assess the Utility of Chess as a Therapeutic Tool in the Multimodal Management of ADHD
Author: Neilay Krishna Agarwal
GEMS Modern Academy, Dubai
Abstract
To examine the utility of chess in ADHD patients, this study was conducted to review the literature using Google Scholar database with the keywords “Chess” AND “ADHD”. The first 5 pages were searched. The following criteria were used: 1) English language 2) All types of studies published in a medical journal. In total 12 articles were identified. Out of a total of 12 articles, 4 satisfied the inclusion criteria and were subsequently reviewed. The review findings showed that chess therapy/ training is effective in the management of patients with ADHD in terms of reducing symptoms and severity. Because of its effectiveness, playful nature, high adherence, and low cost, it can be utilised as a therapeutic tool in multimodal management to improve the symptoms of ADHD. Given the limited number of published studies in this area, our findings can be confirmed with a large randomised controlled trial. We could not find any study which assessed the effectiveness of chess in the adult subgroup of the ADHD population.