Dr. Laura Knauss

So the studies show that difficulties in like educational settings are one of the biggest places that these symptoms show up.

And certainly like in kids, that's how children get identified a lot of times.

And then when you're thinking about adults, the second place where the impairments show up most commonly is in the workplace.

So, you know, what do we know about these settings?

Well, there are settings where you really do have to sit down, concentrate on one thing for a long period of time.

There's not a lot of physical movement or changing of activities really happening a lot of the time.

And so these kinds of environments tend to like really put a strain on kind of self-regulation resources for people with ADHD.

But it really goes beyond that.

So I hear adults talk a lot of just struggling with adulting, right?

Like pay our bills on time, keep up with kids' activities and all that stuff.

And then relationships is another tough thing, right?

In order to be in relationship with other people, a lot of times it requires a lot of kind of regulating your emotions, which can be challenging for adults with ADHD, and also like keeping your promises to other people and, you know, doing the things that you need to do to kind of fulfill your end of the social bargain.

And that really affects people's self-esteem.

So that's something we really have to work with in therapy.

Yeah.

We also know ADHD does put people at risk for other mental health diagnoses.

So from like depression, anxiety, substance use.

So we know that kids with ADHD are at greater risk in adolescence and adulthood for accidental injuries, becoming the victim of violence, you know, those problems with educational attainment, and becoming incarcerated.

So actually the place in society where the rates of ADHD are probably the highest are in our prisons and jails.

And so I think it's really important that we strive for access for quality assessment and treatment for all that have ADHD, not just the folks that kind of make it into private treatment.