The Ripple Effect of ADHD in Adolescents: Self-Perceptions and Social Relationships

Adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are highly vulnerable. Although their hyperactive symptoms tend to decrease from childhood through adolescence, their inattentive symptoms remain stable (see Larsson, 2020, for review). Their academic, social, and emotion regulation difficulties persist, and they are at risk for co-occurring oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, anxiety, and depressive disorders. Despite this vulnerability, as indicated by Russell Barkley in his forward to the recently published book on adolescents with ADHD (Becker, 2020), research on these adolescents is limited compared to research on children and adults with ADHD. Our concerns about the paucity of research that would inform assessment and treatment stimulated my graduate students and I to embark on a research project that we called the Ripple Effect of Adolescent ADHD. The ripple effects we investigated are self-perceptions, family relationships, and peer relationships. The results of our studies have been published in scholarly journals and book chapters and several other articles are in preparation. In this special issue, we focus on some of our studies on self-perceptions and friendships.

I am dedicating this special issue to Amanda Todd, a 15-year old girl with ADHD who died by suicide on October 10, 2012. Amanda lived in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. She was persuaded by an adult predator posing as an adolescent to lift her shirt and expose herself. The predator then took a photo of Amanda and proceeded to blackmail and threaten her for more intimate photos (now known as sextortion). When Amanda did not respond, the intimate photo was posted on the Internet for all to see. She was subsequently a victim of physical, verbal, relational, and cyberbullying by peers and lost many of her friends. She became severely anxious and depressed. Weeks prior to her death, Amanda created a You Tube video that poignantly told her story. Since her death, her mother has created the Amanda Todd Legacy Society which is a non-profit dedicated to prevention and awareness related to bullying, internet safety, and mental wellness.

Fortunately, very few adolescents with ADHD die due to their problematic encounters with their peers. Previous research, however, has shown that the social difficulties of children with ADHD are associated with a negative developmental trajectory in adolescence that includes problems with internalizing and externalizing problems, eating disorders, and addiction (see McQuade, 2020 for review). At the time we embarked on our research, there were few studies about their self-perceptions, friendships, romantic relationships, or experiences of peer victimization.

This special issue consists of four studies. Colomer, Wiener, and Varma examined the extent to which the self-appraisals of adolescents with ADHD for their ADHD symptoms and their social and academic impairment are consistent with the perceptions of parents and teachers, and their performance on standardized academic achievement tests. Varma and Wiener explored the attributions and stigmatization self-perceptions of adolescents with ADHD for their problem behaviors. Maya Beristain and Wiener did a mixed-methods study that provides a thorough examination of the friendships of these teens. The quantitative study compared adolescents with and without ADHD in terms of their self-reported number of friends, the stability of their relationships, and the characteristics of their friends. The adolescent participants in the qualitative study described the trajectory of their peer relations from childhood through adolescence; they discussed peer rejection, bullying, and the evolution of the quality of their friendships over time. This special issue concludes with an article that integrates the findings and discusses implications for practice in school psychology.