Does ADHD Coaching Really Help Your College Student?
This is part of a question that Elizabeth Ahmann, Micah Saviet and Lisa Joy Tuttle set out to answer in Chapter 5 of a new book titled, ADHD Coaching: How to Find an ADHD Coach and What To Do When You Get One, edited by Alan Graham, PhD. To find an answer, the authors reviewed 16 studies aimed at finding out if coaching can produce significant positive outcomes for people with ADHD.
Why worry about college students?
I am choosing to focus on college students for this article because they are perhaps the most vulnerable group of students. Freshly released from high school and the support of family and school faculty, these students are often sent off to college before they’re ready. As Ahmann, Saviet and Tuttle note, “students with ADHD have a higher rate of taking incomplete and repeating courses, a greater frequency of being on academic probation and a higher likelihood of taking leaves of absence”. It’s very likely that a lack of maturity is to blame. Ari Tuckman writes that students need two types of maturity in order to successfully transition to college: the intellectual maturity to handle the academic demands of their courses and the emotional maturity to balance academic demands and social opportunities, in other words to get their work done and have fun too. Students with ADHD typically lag behind in both skills and maturity, setting the stage for struggle if the right supports aren’t put into place.
What do ADHD coaches do?
What does the research say? First of all, there isn’t a lot of research to date. The authors were able to find 10 studies on college students, 5 of which had small groups of participants. The majority of the students worked with professionally trained coaches, while the rest worked with teachers or doctoral students who had some training in regard to coaching.
Coaching services were usually provided once per week or as requested and focused on one or more theoretical models: executive functioning, self determination or empowerment, cognitive behavior, emotional intelligence and psychoeducation.
Executive functioning relates to a person’s ability to regulate and manage him/herself. Think organizing, managing time, regulating emotions, sustaining attention and effort and using memory. Cognitive behavioral therapy provides education about ADHD and seeks to build a client’s self awareness and belief that they are capable of achieving their goals. Self determination theory relates to skills and beliefs that enable a person to follow through on goals and regulate behavior independently. Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to be aware of your own emotions as well as others’ emotions and use that information to guide your decisions and actions. Finally, psychoeducation involves explicitly educating clients about the neurobiology of the disorder.
This sounds like something we could all use a little of, but what did the students think? Interviews with 33 students in two of the smaller studies revealed that students saw improvement in areas such as goal setting and goal directed behavior, self regulation and self management, study skills, productivity and self esteem to name a few. In the large study (148 participants), students reported statistically significant gains in school satisfaction, stress levels, information processing, anxiety, motivation, concentration, and time management also to name a few.
And the answer is!
Let’s get back to that question of whether coaching actually helps college students. According to the authors of the chapter, “the outcome studies reported here reveal that ADHD coaching is very likely a valuable investment for college students with ADHD and the colleges that serve them.” Obviously, we need to gather more data to support this conclusion, but initial results show the promise of supporting our college students with ADHD with trained coaches. Now I’d like to throw in ]my very own personal opinion. I think all of our college aged students could and should take advantage of ADHD coaching to maximize the wealth of potential they have.
Suzanne Leon is a Certified Professional Coach who works with people affected by ADHD/ADD. Visit her website to learn more about the services she provides.
References:
Amman E., Soviet M., Tuttle, L. (2018), ADHD Coaching Outcomes: What Does the Research Say?. In A. Graham (Ed.) ADHD Coaching: How to Find an ADHD Coach and What To Do When You Get One (pp 74-102) Melbourne, FL:Motivational Press, Inc.