ADHD and the Family
The OHSU School of Nursing ADHD research team has conducted three National Institutes of Health funded studies. This group has found that families play a vital role in the care of children and adolescents with ADHD and that ADHD increases stress within families and depression in mothers. Adding family stability and using family-based intervention for helping family members cope with the difficulties of living with ADHD is important for both the child and the family.
What we have found:
- Families with children with ADHD sought out more health, support and educational services than families without children with ADHD.
- Parents had difficulty obtaining the type of services they needed.
- Parents often spent needless time, energy, and money seeking services that were inadequate and/or using services that were not specific to their needs.
- Mother’s levels of distress in parenting children with ADHD was higher than mothers with children without ADHD.
- The degree of mother distress in families with children with ADHD indicated how well the family functioned.
- Working parents often had to make work-related adjustments in order to care for their child with ADHD.
- Parents wanted more information, resources, and education about ADHD particularly in the area of defects in executive and adaptive functioning.
- Parents wanted relief from the financial burden associated with costs of ADHD.
- Family-based interventions, such as PACT: Parents and Children Together, are needed in order to provide individually tailored, in-home family nurse case-management supports to help mothers:
- decrease their parenting stress
- support mothers strengths and parenting confidence
- provide advocacy for their child in the school system
- locate community resources and services specific to their families needs
- The vast majority of participants in the PACT in-home nurse case-management family intervention study were highly satisfied with the intervention and felt the intervention was very effective, specifically in these areas:
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- learning the neurobiology of the disorder
- feeling less isolated
- feeling vindicated that the disorder was not a result of poor parenting
- having an advocate with them during meetings with the schools
- The intervention was more effective for some families than others; families with higher levels of education and income indicated they needed less intervention than families with lower levels of education and income.
