Predictors of Receipt of School Services in a National Sample of Youth With ADHD

Abstract

Objective: The objective of the study is to describe the extent to which students with ADHD received school-based intervention services and identify demographic, diagnostic, and impairment-related variables that are associated with service receipt in a large, nationally drawn sample. Method: Parent-reported data were obtained for 2,495 children with ADHD aged 4 to 17 years from the National Survey of the Diagnosis and Treatment of ADHD and Tourette Syndrome (NS-DATA). Results: The majority (69.3%) of students with ADHD currently receive one or more school services. Educational support (62.3%) was nearly twice as prevalent as classroom behavior management (32.0%). More than 3 times as many students with ADHD had an individualized education program (IEP; 42.9%) as a Section 504 plan (13.6%). Conclusion: At least one in five students with ADHD do not receive school services despite experiencing significant academic and social impairment, a gap that is particularly evident for adolescents and youth from non–English-speaking and/or lower income families.

Bibliometric Review: Classroom Management in ADHD—Is There a Communication Gap Concerning Knowledge Between the Scientific Fields Psychiatry/Psychology and Education?

“…The third hypothesis states that scientific literature fails to focus on how to implement CMS in schools, how to support the teachers, and how to overcome possible barriers when implementing the CMS [17]. The results of the present study find support for this hypothesis, as these topics are rarely handled in either psychology/psychiatry or education.…”

“…Previous research has shown that students with ADHD benefit from specific CMS that teachers can use to handle the symptoms of ADHD in the classroom. However, despite this, CMS are currently not used regularly in schools with the result that students often do not receive the support they could have [12,[14][15][16][17][18]. We assumed that this science-practitioner gap exists because of a communication-related science-science gap between the scientific fields of psychology/psychiatry and education.…”

“…Additionally, as mentioned previously, in the seventh cluster (the role of parents/families) no educational literature is included. Interaction with families about CMS is difficult [18], and poor parent-teacher communication is common for children with ADHD [17]. We see that the fields seem to converge recently, but there are still topics that need more attention, such as implementation strategies that will be discussed in the next paragraph.…”

“…Support for this assumption comes from studies where teachers reported that they primarily use corrective behavioral strategies and only seldom other kinds of behavioral or self-management strategies [14][15][16]. Overall, at least one of three students with ADHD does not receive any support in the classroom in the form of CMS, and this number is even higher for older students as well as for girls [17]. Whereas primary school teachers declare to apply more strategies when teaching children with ADHD, secondary school teachers do not [18], indicating that older students with ADHD do not receive sufficient support in the form of CMS.…”

“…Additionally, this review aims to find out if implementation methods and related barriers are investigated topics in either scientific field. This is important because even where there is good scientific and applied knowledge of CMS for ADHD, still there may be barriers to implementing these strategies; it is therefore useful to know whether this is recognized and explored in either scientific field [17].…”