In addition to the increased risk they face for social and academic problems, adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) must also contend with stigma attached to the disorder. For instance, youth prefer greater social distance from students described with ADHD symptoms than from peers with asthma (Walker, Coleman, Lee, Squire, & Friesen, 2008), and adolescents are also reluctant to engage in activities (e.g., go to the movies, study together) with a peer described with ADHD symptoms compared to peers described as obese or autistic (Law, Sinclair, & Fraser, 2007). Familiarity with individuals diagnosed with ADHD may influence adolescents' perceptions of their peers with ADHD, but the extant research on this relationship in adolescents is limited and mixed. The purpose of this study was to investigate middle school students' familiarity with ADHD, their willingness to engage in activities with a peer exhibiting ADHD symptoms, and how familiarity impacts their willingness to engage in a variety of activities with that peer. A sample of middle school students (N = 176) completed self-report measures of contact with ADHD and willingness to engage with a peer described in a vignette. Participants were randomly assigned vignettes describing either a peer displaying ADHD symptoms or a typical peer, employing a true experimental design. Middle school students expressed greater willingness to engage with a typical peer than one with ADHD symptoms overall. However, a significant difference (p < .05) was found only for academic activities, and not for social and recreational activities. This difference was present regardless of the inclusion of positive characteristics in the description of the peer with ADHD, suggesting that it is something about ADHD symptoms leading to middle school students' reluctance, not simply the lack of appealing characteristics. Additionally, approximately 70% of middle school students indicated some contact with ADHD, although familiarity with ADHD was not found to predict participants' willingness to engage in activities with a peer with ADHD symptoms. Implications for school psychologists and directions for future research are discussed.

Aims: The aim of this research was to engage with the experiences of professionals, parents, and young people in order to develop an understanding of the current diagnosis and management of ADHD. This research will be of interest to Counselling Psychologists working with the child and adolescent population and the clinical area of ADHD. Method: Nine semi- structured interviews were conducted with two young people, three parents, and four professionals. The interviews were transcribed and analysed using the principles’ of grounded theory methods. A constructivist version of grounded theory was implemented, as outlined by Charmaz (2006) and a social constructionist epistemology was adopted. Analysis: A central story line of ‘investing in ADHD’ emerged. This involved the investment of resources in the ‘simple truth’ of ADHD as existing within the child’s brain. A number of categories emerged which contributed to this position, including the ‘battlegrounds’ which were fraught with struggles to gain control of children’s difficult to manage behaviours and ‘knowledge and understanding’ which highlighted the need to understand the nature of the perceived problems. In addition, ‘social expectations’ and ‘personal conflicts’ depicted the social and personal factors which served to construct the perceived problems. Conclusion: The investment in the ‘simple truth’ of ADHD appeared to hold the most meaning for those involved in the study. These findings offer utility for Counselling Psychologists wishing to engage clients in psychological formulation and management approaches which aim to address the underlying factors which influence ADHD.

ADHD is a highly prevalent disorder in both children and adults that involves significant impairment throughout the lifespan, and yet the core cognitive deficits of the disorder are not well understood. Accumulating evidence of dysfunctioning dopamine systems motivated the theory that delay-of-reinforcement gradients are altered in ADHD in such a way that reinforcers must arrive earlier in time following a response for an association between the two to be learned. The current work is motivated by the conjecture that dopamine dysfunction has consequences for the maximum timescales over which connections can be formed, not just in reinforcement learning, but also in the processes of temporal integration and scene formation that allow humans to understand and navigate their world. There is a maximum window of temporal separation over which discrete events can be integrated into a unified experience, and the current experiments indicate that this maximum window of integration is contracted in ADHD. The experiments included multiple tasks designed so that the participant response required implicit integration over temporal intervals, and the length of those intervals was varied as an independent variable. Adults with and without ADHD completed these tasks, and the strength of temporal integration was measured with respect to interval length and compared between the two groups. This methodology was applied in five types of tasks: rhythmic tapping, spatial cuing, irrelevant feature priming, and two apparent motion tasks. On the whole, this suite of studies was successful in demonstrating a contraction in the maximum interval over which temporal integration can occur in ADHD relative to controls. Two of the tasks, rhythmic tapping and spatial cuing, generated unexpected and interesting results, and several follow-up tasks were designed to further explore these findings. As a result, a somewhat improved tapping task was discovered. This tapping task, as well as the irrelevant feature priming task and one of the apparent motion tasks, demonstrated potential utility for the diagnosis of adults with ADHD. / text

Objective: Current studies examining the co-morbidity patterns of ADHD with internalizing disorders have reported inconsistent findings. Some studies have found that the inattentive subtype (ADHD-I) is more likely to be comorbid with internalizing disorders, while other studies found similar levels of comorbid internalizing disorders between the ADHD subtypes. Moreover, anxiety and depression were found to be comorbid in inattentive children high in sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT), characterized by features of sluggishness, drowsiness, and daydreaming. SCT has been postulated to be useful in discriminating a distinct inattentive subtype of ADHD-I with a different pattern of impairments. More recently, low levels of behavioral inhibition (BI)—manifested in the form of disinhibited behaviors—have also been implicated in the development of ADHD in children. The current study examines the relationships between ADHD and internalizing symptoms. The roles of SCT and BI in ADHD and internalizing symptoms are also investigated. Methods: The sample was comprised of 1,965 Hong Kong primary students between 8 and 14 years old and their parents/caregivers from 10 local schools. The children completed two self-report scales: the Revised Children Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS) and the Behavioral Inhibition System Scale (BISS). Their parents/caregivers completed three scales: the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Rating Scale–IV (ADHDRS-IV), the Oppositional Defiant Disorder Scale (ODDS), and the Sluggish Cognitive Tempo Scale (SCTS). Using a psychometric approach, the relationships between the symptom clusters of ADHD (inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity), anxiety, depression, SCT, and BI were systematically examined with correlation, regression, and factor analyses. A categorical approach was also used to classify children meeting the DSM symptom criteria to compare levels of internalizing symptoms among the three subtypes of ADHD: ADHD-I, ADHD-HI (hyperactive-impulsive), and ADHD-C (combined hyperactive and inattentive). An SCT cutoff score of 20 (the mean SCT rating among ADHD-I children) was used to further divide the ADHD-I into high- and low-SCT subgroups for planned between-group comparisons. Results: In the dimensional analyses, the inattention dimension of ADHD correlated slightly higher than the hyperactivity-impulsivity dimension with anxiety and depression as predicted. But the hyperactivity-impulsivity dimension was also significantly correlated with anxiety and depression, suggesting that hyperactive children were as likely as inattentive children to feel anxious and depressed. Regression analyses found that inattention was not predictive of anxiety and depression, while hyperactivity-impulsivity was marginally predictive of anxiety, but not depression. BI and SCT emerged as significant predictors of internalizing symptoms after controlling for age, gender, and ODD symptoms. There was evidence that SCT mediated the relationship between anxiety/depression and inattention symptoms. Using the categorical approach, between-group differences were found between the ADHD subtypes and the no-ADHD category. ADHD-I children were more anxious and depressed than children without ADHD. Differences in depressive symptoms were found between the ADHD subtypes. Children with ADHD-I had higher levels of depressive symptoms when compared to children with ADHD-HI and ADHD-C. Contrary to predictions, however, the high-SCT ADHD-I group and the low-SCT ADHD-I group did not differ in symptom levels for any anxiety disorders, major depressive disorder, or externalizing symptoms of ODD. Subtype differences in comorbid anxiety were found to be related to gender differences. The symptom levels of panic disorder were higher in females with ADHD-I, and the symptom levels of separation-anxiety disorder were higher for females with ADHD-C. Inattentive girls might present with higher levels of anxiety symptoms than boys. Conclusions: Consistent with previous studies, children with ADHD were more comorbid with anxiety and depression than children without ADHD. In addition, children with ADHD-I were more comorbid with depressive symptoms than children with ADHD-HI and ADHD-C. The higher ratings of depression in ADHD-I children appeared to be related to higher ratings of SCT found in this subtype. There was no difference in anxiety symptoms among the ADHD subtypes, but girls with clinical levels of inattention tend to experience a wider spectrum of anxiety disorders than boys. Contrary to previous research, the findings did not support the idea that SCT is useful in discriminating a distinct inattentive subtype, since this study found no comorbidity differences between the high-SCT ADHD-I and low-SCT ADHD-I groups. Despite the fact that the ADHD-I group had higher BI, there was no evidence that they had higher anxiety symptoms. Reasons for the lack of a direct relationship between BI and internalizing symptoms in ADHD are discussed. The complex roles of SCT and BI in ADHD symptoms and internalizing symptoms call for the need of further local investigation in both clinical and community samples. / published_or_final_version / Clinical Psychology / Doctoral / Doctor of Psychology

Not available / text

Not available / text

Not available / text

This qualitative study describes teens' perceptions about AD/HD and medications. Roy's Adaptation Model's four modes of adaptation were the framework for this study. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 15 high school teens aged 14-17 with parent reported AD/HD. Findings of inductive analysis for modes: Physiologic (Medication), Medications are a hassle but they work; Role function, I do better in school when I take the meds; Interdependence, With meds things are better with my family and friends don't know I am any different; and Self-concept/group identity, I'm just an everyday teenager, pretty much. The composite main theme was: Meds help me. School nurses can use this knowledge to guide interventions for families and teens with AD/HD, healthcare providers, school teachers and staff, and communities in a multidisciplinary effort toward an adaptive educational experience compatible for teens.

Differing opinions among the disciplines involved in the diagnosis and treatment of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have left parents navigating in a maze of divergent languages, explanations, and treatment recommendations. This quantitative research study addressed the question of whether a parent training program was an effective treatment for families of children with ADHD residing in a rural community. Although this community-based study did not demonstrate statistically significant outcome measures, it did reveal some interesting side effects. The limitations and the clinical significance of the findings of the study are examined for future research purposes. In particular, the implications for social work practice with families of children with ADHD residing in rural communities are explored from an ecological perspective.

This thesis was designed to investigate differences in aggression between girls with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Forty girls with ADHD and 43 girls without ADHD aged 9- to 12- years and their mothers and teachers participated. A multiassessment methodology was used to investigate these differences, employing mothers' reports, teachers' reports, and a laboratory aggression analogue task (a computer game involving simulated girls in other rooms). The results indicated that mothers and teachers saw girls with ADHD as having much higher levels of all types of aggression assessed, including overt, relational, proactive, and reactive aggression, than girls in the control group. On the lab task, girls with ADHD used a strategy that involved more threatening and bragging comments, and social exclusions of their co-players. Expected differences on some of the lab task measures did not emerge. Also, according to mothers, teachers, and the results from the lab task, girls with ADHD were significantly less prosocial than girls in the control group. Where significant group differences had been found, follow-up tests generally indicated that girls with ADHD and comorbid oppositional-defiant disorder (ODD) were more aggressive than girls in the control group, with girls with ADHD but not ODD falling in between. In sum, these results indicate substantial cause for concern for the concurrent and future psychosocial well-being of girls with ADHD.