Ep.
6
ADHD Research recap: Father-child interactions and emotional dysregulation
This week we're discussing the latest research on emotional dysregulation, executive function, and how they affect many of us with ADHD.
How do emotional regulation – and dysregulation – relate to ADHD? This week, we look at several studies about ADHD, executive function, and emotional dysregulation. Is emotional dysregulation tied to executive function? How do early childhood influences affect emotional dysregulation? And how does sleep – or the lack of it – affect emotional regulation and executive function? We'll discuss each study in depth and share our own experiences.
https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/
Shownotes:
Additional Research Discussed
https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/post/adhd-and-mindfulness
https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/post/self-criticism-and-adhd-five-strategies-to-check-in-ground-and-reset-when-you-feel-overwhelmed
https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/post/adhd-and-sleep-twelve-tips-to-facilitate-a-better-night-s-rest
https://chadd.org/attention-article/adhd-and-the-myth-of-the-bad-parent/
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11121-022-01358-4
Developmental antecedents of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms in middle childhood: The role of father-child interactions and children’s emotional underregulation
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579423000408
Evidence of emotion dysregulation as a core symptom of adult ADHD: A systematic review
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280131
Associations Between ADHD, Sleep Problems, and Mental Health Symptoms in Adolescents
https://doi.org/10.1177/10870547231155871
Skye: 0:05
Hi, we are the ADHD Skills Lab Podcast. My name is Skye,
Sarah: 0:10
and my name is Sarah.
Skye: 0:11
And we will be your hosts chatting to you about practical ADHD strategies you can use, the research behind some of these strategies, as well as interviewing other professionals with ADHD about how they've developed skills in working through struggles in their lives.
Sarah: 0:25
You might know us from Unconventional Organisation where we talk about this kind of stuff all day long. So we're super excited to have you along and we're gonna chat through it together.
Skye: 0:39
Okay, so today, we have three pretty interesting papers,I think they're all very interesting in their own right,focusing on emotional regulation, emotional dysregulation, and mental health. So yeah, Sarah, lots to,lots to chat about today, we're going to go through sleep, we're going to go through parenting and ADHD. And we have a lot of thoughts on that paper. And we're also going to talk a little bit about supportive versus unsupportive methods of managing emotional dysregulation, which is something that we all struggle with. I mean, I think, before we even get started on this, these particular topics, I think it would might be good for us just to have a quick chat about emotional regulation in general.So one of the things that we know about emotional regulation is that it's something that a lot of people with ADHD struggle with, but it's not something that is in currently any kind of DSM diagnosis. And if you've listened to some of our other podcasts episodes that are out now, you'll hear us talking about that in other ways, as well. So did you have anything you wanted to add Sarah, about just emotional regulation as a whole? Kind of putting you on the spot here.
Sarah: 1:48
No, that's okay. I, I have so much to say about emotional dysregulation and self regulation, as it's usually discussed in the literature.It's one of those topics that you don't anticipate getting into when you start ADHD coaching, and then sort of it just continually comes back. And it's like, oh, that might be sort of what's underlying this challenge, this particular executive functioning challenge.And it sort of just points to a study that we've discussed in the past, which was that the executive functioning challenges that we often faced with ADHD,some studies say that it's a result of the emotional dysregulation challenges that you don't see.
Skye: 2:33
Yeah.
Sarah: 2:33
So I just wanted to call that out.
Skye: 2:35
Yeah, no, I think that's a great one. And I'll see if we can find that and put it in the show notes as well, just in case anyone else is interested,because it is definitely a factor. And in terms of one of the things that we see a lot in,in ADHD coaching, sometimes it is something that is affecting your executive functioning. So it might be that you're not getting something done, because you're struggling with sort of a lot of self criticism, a lot of perfectionism and other things.And in the second paper, we'll definitely get into, you know,what those things might be in a bit more detail. Okay, so let's jump in. So the first paper is,again, these are all from 2023.But the first paper is from development and psycho pathology. And that is looking at the origins of emotional dysregulation as it affects or as it is related to fathers emotional disengagement during early life. So what this paper theorizes based on their research, and it's important,and we will come back to this,to remember that this is one paper with one opinion, we have our own opinions. But what they did was they did a long as tuner study investigating the association between how fathers parented in infancy, and their children's emotional regulation skills in early childhood, as well as the likelihood or whether they had ADHD symptoms in middle childhood. And what they found in their study was that emotionally disengaged fathers would link to emotional dysregulation in early childhood and ADHD in middle childhood. So this was an interesting paper that came across our desk picked out for us by our wonderful research team. It is peer reviewed, we found. It was using a double blind peer review
Sarah: 4:19
Yes, I definitely sort of wanted to go through this one system, but it was definitely a paper that caused a lot of very carefully, just to make sure that we got this one right,discussion internally. And me and Sarah were actually talking about it before we even jumped on today's podcast.because anytime you start discussing like the cause of ADHD, you already know that's going to be sort of controversial. One thing that you did leave out about this article is that they were also saying that the emotional engagement of the father at 24months was a predictive measure when it came to being diagnosed with ADHD at age seven, that was the piece for me that was like,Are they sure?
Skye: 5:10
You're right, you're right, I did leave that out, I think maybe my academic training just kind of smoothed it out.Because I'm like, from my experience, as a psychologist,the first thing we learned is that correlation does not equal causation. That's like drilled into us, which and what that basically means is that just because two things are connected, just because you see an association between two things, it doesn't mean that one thing causes the other. And for a lot, you know, a lot of people, you can see that in your own experiences of just life. So yeah, it was, it was very interesting. And I, you know, I have to be honest, you know, I know, like, a lot of us, you know, we don't all have amazing relationships with our family,or maybe we do, and we still have ADHD, or maybe we're parents, you know, we're both parents ourselves, worrying about our own parenting styles and hoping that we're doing a good job, and also feeling, you know, confident in our ADHD and knowing there is a genetic component. So when you see a paper like this, there is an emotional response to a paper like this. And I think it's worthwhile just mentioning that we both had an emotional response to the idea of this paper, because it just felt so confronting. And also, when you read it, there was no, at least I didn't see anything, I don't know if you saw anything Sarah,real nod to the fact that this is a very contentious opinion.And and if you look at a lot of what we would call grey literature, which is sort of literature that's not academically peer reviewed, but it's just on the internet, like the Chad website, or or, you know, a lot of websites for support, they would say very strongly, parenting is not predictive of ADHD. So it's not in line with what we would consider to be a lot of the gray literature as well.
Sarah: 7:00
Yeah, I mean, you could definitely tell just by looking at my notes on this paper that I felt a little bit attacked, or sort of just like, wanted to figure it out, because I have easily an entire page of notes just on this article, sort of like, what are they measuring?How are they measuring this?What might they have left out?You know, I would have been great on the peer review.
Skye: 7:22
Yeah, I do. I do feel like it is important for us to acknowledge our own biases in this conversation, because we definitely, definitely do have them. And then yeah, like you said, you wrote notes, I wrote notes, we both went in as sort of academically as possible looking at, okay, what does it say? What is it focusing on? So in terms of you know, those results? Yes, Sara, do you want us to take us through like, what did they measure? And what were the results of this paper?
Sarah: 7:51
Yep. So they originally started out, as I mentioned, so longitudinal study. So they were following these families for seven years, the study took place in the southwest of the United States. So they started with 124 families by you know,sort of the seventh year only 71families remained in that sample. They measured a number of different things in a couple of different ways. But I would say probably the most important ones were they started out measuring infant temperament. At three to six weeks of age, they had the mom sort of fill out a behavior scale, to just get a baseline measure of the infant's temperament.
Skye: 8:32
I don't know if I knew anything about my child's temperament at three to six weeks.
Sarah: 8:36
Listen, I barely remember three to six weeks.
Skye: 8:42
I mean, my son's one and a half now. And I feel like we're just seeing his temperament right now. So that's its own conversation about infant temperament, subjective versus objective. But continue, sorry.
Sarah: 8:53
No, it's okay. I even looked at the scale that they used too because I was like,exactly what you said, what were they measuring? Like I was exhausted at three to six weeks.It was things like movement during feedings, and things like that. So it's very interesting.But then they measured they evaluated for the ADHD at age seven, using a behavioral scale filled out by the child's teacher. Which isn't an official diagnosis.
Skye: 9:20
Wait, so there was no official diagnosis of ADHD in this study?
Sarah: 9:25
That's correct. From what I can tell, I could have missed something.
Skye: 9:29
So this is based on not actually ADHD diagnosis from a psychiatrist.
Sarah: 9:34
That's what I understand.Yeah.
Skye: 9:37
Huh. If you wrote this study, please talk to us. We
Sarah: 9:40
I do have so many questions. Yeah. I mean, if you have so many questions.look at the actual title of the article, I'll read it slowly.Developmental antecedents of ADHD symptoms in middle They were measuring the symptoms. Yeah.childhood. They weren't actually trying to measure a diagnosis.
Skye: 9:56
Right.Symptoms do not equal diagnosis. Correlation doesn't equal causation. These are both really important.
Sarah: 10:07
Right, which is why I mean, yeah, I went through it.They did a lot of things great.You know, they controlled for family income, gender differences of the infants.Their sample wasn't exactly super racially diverse. 84% were They did point that out in their study limitations, sort white.
Skye: 10:25
Okay, that is interesting.of like we're not sure how general-- generaliza--. Oh, my goodness.Generalizable? Yeah, I get that, yeah.
Sarah: 10:36
But one thing that I still can't get over is that while they acknowledge that ADHD is extremely heritable, they don't acknowledge at all whether or not any of these children had parents who were ADHD or other mental diagnoses of the parents period. And I feel like to me that almost nullifies the whole thing.
Skye: 10:59
Sort of a limitation.
Sarah: 11:01
Yeah, for sure. It's definitely a limitation. Yeah.And that one is not acknowledged.
Skye: 11:07
Yeah. You also said it was hard to find the number of people who actually, I mean,like you said, we're just looking at teachers symptoms of something that could be caused,it could be ADHD. And there's not a huge, like, the numbers on that were a bit fuzzy as well.
Sarah: 11:25
Yeah. So I did go about trying to find out. So we know the exact number of the sample size, and we know the strength of the bivariate relationship.But what we don't know is how many children in this sample actually did have ADHD symptoms,I might just not be mapping this right. Like my math skills might not be very good. You know, I did not take graduate level statistics, nor did I take any calculus. But yeah, the results only seem to measure the strength of the relationship of the two variables and did not actually address how many children had the presence of ADHD symptoms, which is another thing that was sort of like,
Skye: 12:09
Yeah, no, it's true. And although it depends on the size of the article, obviously, how much space they had in the paper, I would hope to see a table of the descriptive results so that you didn't have to do that.
Sarah: 12:23
There was a table and it did not seem to have, the table consisted of means, sample sizes, standard deviations
Skye: 12:33
Didn't have that information.
Sarah: 12:35
Not that I could tell.
Skye: 12:39
takeaways is just to know that studies like this are out there. There's a lot of individual independent studies for a number of different reasons. If you see a study or you hear somebody reference a study, it's always good to just go that's really interesting, is that part of a meta analysis. Is that part of a big literature review? Or is that one independent study? Because even if you don't have time, because you know, who has the time to go through and at length discuss all of these different individual studies, it's still useful, like this study right from the beginning, although I will say I did find other research that has this view as well, you know, and so like one of it was a systematic review from 2022, which focused on parenting factors predicting diagnosis. So parenting and family environment as risk factors for ADHD in children. I haven't gone into that study in great detail, I just wanted to flag that this is not a lone study, there are other studies that have this focus as well.But unless you're looking at something that is a up to date,meta analysis, literature review of a variety of studies on the topic, and it's coming up with results that seem engaging and make sense. And then those results are being floated through into like, Chad or places like that. Just because someone sent you this, it does not mean that this is the case.And I think that's probably the biggest takeaway we can take from the study.
Sarah: 14:17
Yeah, that's a really good point, Skye.
Skye: 14:19
Yeah. And if you have anything you want to add to this discussion, if you've got any research or if you've done anything, definitely definitely,you know, reach out to us because I would like to talk to somebody about this because I definitely found that it was a it's a hot button topic. There's a lot of academics with a lot of opinions about this. And it makes sense because it's a big,the idea of what are the causational factors behind ADHD is a huge, huge area.
Sarah: 14:46
You know, they did somewhat address this in the beginning of their article as well. This was an ambitious study, very ambitious study. And it seems like you know, while they acknowledged like I said the inheritable quality of ADHD,they really wanted to look into the nurture factor at the epigenetic factor of developing ADHD. So this is one way to go about that.
Skye: 15:12
And more more research is always good. You know, we want people looking at things. We just want people to be interpreting things correctly, I would hate for somebody to get a hold of this and really feel like oh, my gosh, this means,ABC about my life and my child.And I think that would be something that I would definitely want to just caution everyone against.
Sarah: 15:33
Yeah, and, you know, I really think that the limitation of not addressing the parents mental status is really that people with ADHD struggle to self regulate. So they're also going to struggle to self regulate when parenting their children. So that is a valid concern to have, as a parent,like the way that we model for our children is definitely going to have long term implications.But again, just saying sort of,when you summarize it, it just sort of sounds like they're disregarding that piece.
Skye: 16:07
Yeah, no, definitely actually speaking off regulation in adults with ADHD, should we move on to our second paper?
Sarah: 16:16
Sure, let's do it.
Skye: 16:18
If you like what you hear,don't forget to subscribe, you can get weekly updates. When we launch a new podcast episode, we have lots of interviews,practical strategies, as well as research recaps where Sarah and I go through the latest research.
Sarah: 16:31
So the second article that we have for you today is about Well, first of all, it's a systematic literature review of emotional dysregulation in adults with ADHD. And you know,this range is quite high, but it finds that substantial emotional dysregulation is present, in about 34 to 70% of adults with ADHD. So as we mentioned earlier, sort of emotional dysregulation manifests in a variety of ways. That could be sort of the self criticism that Skye mentioned, ruminating over things sort of always thinking the worst, you know, so it really did look at the prevalence, the high prevalence of emotional dysregulation with ADHD. So some of the limitations of this study that it recognized were that there's no agreed upon criteria for the assessment of ADHD, the presence of comorbidities also can make it difficult to sort of evaluate this one way or the other. But the review did find that the activation patterns in the brain when experiencing emotional dysregulation, in adults with ADHD, were different to those in adults without ADHD. I think that that is sort of the important piece here.
Skye: 17:49
Yeah, I think it's also important to note that, you know, they found it was present based on the literature in between 34 to 70% of adults,that's a very high, you know,that's a bottom end of the bell curve, to top end of the bell curve. So there was clearly a lot, a lot of different findings in that. One of the things that,you know, this study talks about is that idea of the non adaptive emotional regulation strategies,like you mentioned, and I think in terms of our own experiences,both personally and also working with clients. Often, you know,when clients come to our coaching services, sometimes they have almost consciously decided to continue to have these self criticism, self blaming strategies, because it's, it's what is prompting them to finish the work that they need to do. And there's a fear that if they let go of that, they're going to end up in a position where, well, if I don't use self criticism, or catastrophizing, how am I going to get anything done? I've definitely spoken to clients who have said that previously, which is really rough.
Sarah: 18:53
That is so sad. You know what, and just sort of adding to that, I feel like that is really a conditioned response that we have sort of over a long period of time. Other studies indicate that we spend so much of our lives being exposed to negative feedback that it's almost no wonder that we have this negative self talk as we would address that in an ADHD coaching
Skye: 19:18
Yeah, definitely. I mean,some of those references that session.you're talking about is like articles on the idea of self criticism being something that we know from the research that children growing up will receive more self criticism if they have ADHD compared to if they're neurotypical. It doesn't necessarily have to be negative.It can just be a bunch of people saying, Hey, you're doing things differently. You need to do it like this. You're not doing it right. And that can really add to our feelings of self criticism as we grow up, you know, you're not doing it right.You're not doing it correctly.And then they can almost be a connecting thing. And again,we're not therapists, of maybe going okay, well, maybe that criticism I received If I turn it in on myself, will help me do things the right way, because I know I'm not doing it right. But I don't know how to solve that,which is incredibly sad.
Sarah: 20:08
Yeah, it's awful. You know, I have some personal experience with this. You know,prior to being diagnosed with ADHD, we were exploring several other diagnoses. But obviously,like depression is a blanket statement here. And so one of the most common strategies that my therapist would suggest and you know, the writers of this meta analysis also suggest that intervention such as mindfulness training could be used to sort of recondition these maladaptive patterns. There are other studies unrelated to ADHD that also suggest that mindfulness is just one mode of treatment that could be just as effective as CBT, and medication combo, the mindfulness and the CBT combo.So you know, mindfulness training, there it is, again,
Skye: 21:01
we found it. But ya know,it's definitely true, I think it's, it's really important to know that there are alternative ways of getting support out there. We've talked about mindfulness a lot, we have an article on mindfulness on our website written by Sarah, if you'd like to have a look at it to kind of get started on that space. And obviously, we always recommend seeing a therapist to discuss this, if this is really hitting home for you. Another thing to add to that conversation is to say that those non adaptive strategies if you're using them, because you feel like that's the only way you can get anything done, there are lots of other strategies and other ways to get things done.Often, what's happening is that you're just learning to do things in a, what we would call neurotypical way, like a non ADHD way. A lot of what we can do is basically build your strategies, such as the time blindness conversation, and we have a really cool article on time blindness coming up in future research recaps, or the working memory conversation.There's lots of ways that we can support you to be able to use a combination of executive functioning strategies and mindfulness to mean that you don't have to rely on self criticism to get things done.It's definitely possible. I mean, I mentioned that that's something that sometimes our clients come to us and say that this is just what I got to do. I just wanted to state for the record. That's not how they feel in like six weeks or four weeks of working with us, you know,very much we teach people how to use other strategies, and mindfulness is definitely a part of that. But also, sometimes it's those practical strategies to get things done as well.
Sarah: 22:39
Yeah, it's about making a strategy that you might feel is not super ADHD friendly, like meditation in general, and finding ways to make that more ADHD friendly for you, you know,maybe it's reshaping that perspective of what meditation is, maybe it's finding those working memory supports to help you be able to access that tool when you need it, and just sort of things like that.
Skye: 23:03
Yeah. And also checking in on when you tend to use self criticism, is it right before a deadline, maybe we can find another way to work on that deadline that doesn't require that sort of feeling of self blame to get going. In terms of the study, they did note some limitations. So there was a lack of agreed upon criteria for the assessment of ADHD, and emotional dysregulation. And there was also the presence of comorbidities. And I think this paper does a really good job of of stating that, you know what,that 54 to 70%? There's a lot of different people with a lot of different papers with a lot of different feelings about this.So I think they did a good job of like, recognizing that in their literature review, while providing some interesting topics
Sarah: 23:46
Gotta love a study who recognizes their limitations.
Skye: 23:50
Yeah, we all need to do it. And studies are no exception. So in terms of what does this mean, what do we take away from this? I think one of the things we can take away from this is that you might be using non adaptive emotional regulation strategies, it might just be good to check in with yourself when you're doing these things and say, Am I one of that34 to 70%? And could I do something? Can we make some adjustments? Could I reach out to somebody to be able to live in a more mentally healthy space because a lot of us struggle with this prior to diagnosis a lot of us are bringing into diagnosis. So you're not alone if this is you. Okay, and then the last study is kind of a, an interesting one I thought it was it was very interesting. So this study looked at sleep, and they found that poor sleep had a stronger association with mental health struggles among adolescents, but only adolescence without ADHD. They couldn't find a strong association with mental health struggles with the students who had ADHD. So what they ended up doing was they found that, you know, sleep problems are more common among adolescents with ADHD. We know sleep is a struggle for ADHD. But that predictive poor mental health didn't have an association,which they were really surprised by. And there are a few questions about why that might be that we can get into. So Sarah, you want to take it away?Sarah also wrote a paper or an article for us on sleep. So this is a great one for you this week.
Sarah: 25:28
Yeah, I mean, so they recognize that ADHD, it's actually like the very first sentence of their paper is that ADHD is often associated with sleep problems. And again, the prevalence rates on that are have huge ranges, you know, like23 to 73% of people with ADHD struggle with sleep in some way.When I was doing research for this sleep article for our website, one of the reasons why it was so challenging to really study ADHD and sleep specifically, is because that often the subjective measures of sleep. So that's like self report scales, and the objective measures of sleep. That's like the sleep study data, the results of those didn't match,you know, so
Skye: 26:16
that makes sense. When I wake up. If you asked me how I sleep. I'm like, I don't remember I was asleep. Oh, I do remember but. Yeah, it's like,awful, but like only for 10minutes. Like, it's hard to imagine being subjective about something that you're so unconscious for.
Sarah: 26:31
Yeah. I mean, that's a really good point. It's more about sort of, like, how do you feel when you wake up? And so that wouldn't really match up.So like, the sleep study data would suggest that you've slept fine. And then sort of the subjective measure sort of how you feel after you wake up, it does not support that conclusion. Sort of like, oh,no, I feel like did I actually sleep?
Skye: 26:55
It's just called being a parent.
Sarah: 26:58
It might be.
Skye: 26:59
Yeah, but no, I know what you mean, I actually thought it was interesting. In this paper,they also specifically specified that sometimes the reports were from parents, and sometimes the reports were from the students themselves, and that also seemed to have a very big difference in terms of, you know, because they were studying the mental health aspects. And so they were saying, Did this have an effect on on mental health? And what they seem to be finding was that the results did differ depending on whether it was the parent answering the question, or whether it was the student answering the question, which I think is just interesting to flag as well. And I think they did flag it as well.
Sarah: 27:37
Yeah, I think you're right, they did mention that.The other thing I think that we could acknowledge about this study is that the specific mental health symptoms that they were measuring, were depression,anxiety, irritability. So those aren't necessarily symptoms that are strongly associated with ADHD, at least not in the common literature. Although if I had a nickel for every woman who said they were diagnosed with depression and anxiety before they were diagnosed with ADHD,yeah.
Skye: 28:11
Yeah, I mean, I think it,it is associated somewhat, but I think it is interesting. I guess, if we think about this,basically, what they found was that people who had ADHD who didn't get enough sleep, and they talked about it, as I think we have the actual numbers here is like an average of six hours of sleep, which just for the record, I know a lot of people who only ever get six hours of sleep. So that was a reminder about how much sleep we're supposed to be getting. But in terms of what they found that was that if you got less sleep,it was associated with higher reported mental health struggles in people who didn't have ADHD,but not for people who did have ADHD. There was some discussion about maybe that's just because people who have ADHD already struggle with mental health so much, it was hard to see how everything was connected. There was also some consideration maybe maybe people with ADHD,they said medication, but there was also other ways of working within mental health. So maybe,if you have ADHD, and you already have a mental health struggle, you're already on the up and down. Good day, bad day.I have strategies for that. So sleep was just an additional factor in that kind of how sometimes if you have executive functioning struggles, and you have you don't have enough sleep as well, it's like, okay, well,this is a bad day, because now I have executive functioning struggles from sleep deprivation and from ADHD. But I also happen to have more strategies that I've learned. So maybe it was the lack of strategies in the non ADHD group that was affecting it. That was something that they thought might be the case.
Sarah: 29:50
That's a really interesting point. Yeah, it's almost like sort of the baseline mental health symptoms for someone with ADHD was just sort of higher, I wonder how they controlled for that?
Skye: 30:02
Yeah, I don't actually know how they control for that either. You know what we should do? If you are somebody who knows about sleep, and you're a sleep researcher with ADHD,please get in touch with us.We'd love to have you on the podcast to talk about this in more detail. Because it is an interesting topic. And it was an interesting study, I think that they were very careful to say,this is a finding. It's not what we were expecting, we don't really know why it is the case,we have a few ideas. And so you know, I imagine what they were expecting was that they were going to go in, they were going to do an association between ADHD sleep problems and mental health symptoms and adolescence.And then we're going to find that people who have ADHD, who have less sleep have higher mental health symptoms. And that was going to be the paper. So I got the impression that this was not the paper they were expecting to write. Although I might be wrong about that.
Sarah: 30:54
No, that's really interesting. In the sort of odd,is this section called? I think this is yeah. I think this is the results section. So it actually looks like the non ADHD group had a stronger relationship between sleep difficulties and greater mental health symptoms, which sort of means that the mental health symptoms in the ADHD population were weaker, had a weaker relationship to the sleep difficulty, sort of the mental health symptoms of the ADHD group, were maybe explained by something else.
Skye: 31:33
Yeah, it's possible that we were just dealing with ADHD that was why. Oh, yeah, no,100%. Yeah, I think in terms of what we can take away from this study, I mean, it was just a really interesting study to read as well, very surprising findings. But, you know, sleep is important with ADHD. And mental health, even if it's not connected to mental health symptoms in adolescence, and again, this is one study, it's still a huge factor for us. And it is interesting to see and maybe there's another thing we can take away from this is that people with ADHD, we're pretty resilient. You know, we have a rough night, we don't get enough sleep. And we're, if we're working on our, you know, mental health, you're doing our mindfulness, we have our executive functioning and tools in place, maybe we don't let that affect us as much as somebody who might not have that. So there is maybe a small link that they have touched on,but haven't necessarily gone into between ADHD and resilience and the fact that we are potentially quite good at managing something because we're already good at it. So
Sarah: 32:42
practice makes progress.
Skye: 32:44
Yeah, if you're gonna take away anything from this study, I would say there is indication that maybe we are resilient, and those strategies are helping that we've been learning. And also everybody needs sleep. It is important and still important for ADHD, but potentially, maybe for executive functioning reasons as well.
Sarah: 33:02
Yeah, I wanted to call that out before we sort of finished with that is that when I was researching for the sleep article, there were several studies that indicated impaired executive functioning skills,particularly like inattentive symptoms were worsened by lack of sleep, just a general decrease in executive functioning. And if you wanted to read that article, you would be able to go on to unconventionalorganisation.com and look up ADHD and sleep.
Skye: 33:30
Yeah, no, 100% We are still pro sleep.
Sarah: 33:35
Yes. Super pro sleep.Yeah.
Skye: 33:38
And we would be anyway,because like we said at the beginning with the other article, this is just one paper,and not a collection of anything particular. But yeah, no, a lot of really, it's really interesting to see, because all of this, these three studies came out this year. So it's really interesting to see what's happening right now in the field of ADHD and emotional regulation. Because there are lots of papers coming out.There's lots of different things, lots of different opinions. And and that's what we do, we try and keep you up to date on it, and hopefully give you some practical takeaways and just a little bit of a critique,as well. But we do appreciate everyone putting a lot of time and effort into putting a paper out. I know how hard and long that process can be.
Sarah: 34:22
You know what, anybody that wants to sort of help out further the field of understanding ADHD is okay in my book. We need so much more of it. We're sort of working on a deficit here. No pun intended.We don't have enough research in this field.
Skye: 34:40
Yeah. Keep it coming. And we'll keep talking about it.Awesome. Okay, well, that's everything for this week's research recap. Thank you so much for listening to us. Please reach out. All of the information is in our show notes about these articles. If you want to learn more, if you have any opinions about these articles or you know somebody who wrote them and you want to,you know, put them forward for a podcast or anything like that,please reach out to us, we'd love to chat further about any of these topics.Thanks for listening. If you'd like to reach out or connect with us, you can leave us a message at admin@unconventionalorganisation.com
Sarah: 35:22
You can also find out more about our ADHD coaching organization, read our free articles, or sign up to our online courses at unconventionalorganisation.com That's organization with a Z or an S they both will get you there.
Skye: 35:36
If you'd like to learn more about what we discussed here today, or you want to read the transcript, you can find that at our show notes page at unconventionalorganisation.com.
Sarah: 35:45
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Skye: 36:02
Thanks so much for listening. And we'll see you back in the ADHD lab next week.