Life and Vocational Skills

Abstract

Adults with ADHD experience a variety of challenges when it comes to life skills, employment, and other transition and post-transition needs, and their needs can be radically different from those of children who tend to be more often the focus of research in this space (Ginsberg et al., 2014). In particular, research has indicated that adults with ADHD are less likely to succeed in the workplace than those without ADHD (Coetzer, 2016). The Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA) followed children with ADHD (original N = 579 with 82% retention into adulthood) and a local normative comparison group (original N = 258 with 93% retention into adulthood). Early adulthood evaluations were conducted 16 years after enrollment in the study, and participants were, on average, close to 25 years old. In early adulthood, there were significant differences between individuals with ADHD and controls in impulsivity, mood (rapid exaggerated changes in mood), educational attainment, occupational outcomes, and sexual behavior outcomes (Hechtman et al., 2016). More specifically, there were significant differences in whether or not an individual had obtained postsecondary education, the times he or she had quit or been fired from a job, current income, and whether or not he or she was receiving public assistance (Hechtman et al., 2016). This research points to the critical importance of developing and studying tools to support positive outcomes in adulthood. In this chapter, we first provide background on the experiences of adults living with ADHD, then review the technological systems that have been studied or suggested for supporting people with ADHD. We begin that review with general life skills and then move into the broad employment and vocational skills domain.