Expanding Our Focus: Adding Well-Being Interventions to Adult ADHD Treatment Plans
Research is expanding regarding Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in adults, a psychiatric disorder that features struggles with excessive distractibility, impulsivity, and restlessness, and often co-occurs with other mental disorders, such as anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. The resultant impact and complications of ADHD on one’s career, relationships, and other areas of life is substantive, making quality of life and well-being critical issues in adults with ADHD. Current ADHD treatment regimens emphasize mitigating the disorder and managing symptoms. These important goals, while creating some improvement in quality of life, fall short of the skills and approaches that enable individuals with ADHD to flourish. By augmenting standard ADHD treatment plans with well-being interventions, practitioners and patients can build the positives that make life worth living while they are mitigating the negatives that create challenge. The well-being model of PERMA, complemented by selected components of flourishing that are essential for, and often lacking in, individuals with ADHD – self-efficacy, community, vitality, and self-compassion – is offered as a roadmap, set of interventions, and metrics to help build psychological well-being concurrently with standard ADHD treatment plans. Flourishing and psychological well-being are both desirable and achievable among adults with ADHD.
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