Social Functioning Outcomes of a High School-Based Treatment Program for Adolescents with ADHD

ABSTRACT

Objective

We evaluated the extent to which receiving the multi-component treatment of the Challenging Horizons Program (CHP) would lead to significant improvements in social functioning, as well as in inattention, internalizing symptoms, parent stress, and emotion dysregulation for high-school-aged adolescents with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Method

Participants were 186 high-school-aged adolescents (74% White) with a diagnosis of ADHD who were randomly assigned to either CHP (n = 92; 80% boys; M age = 15.0; SD = 0.8) or Community Care (CC; n = 94; 78% boys; M age = 15.1; SD = 0.9) within each of 12 participating schools. Parent and adolescent reports of social functioning were the primary outcome measures. Secondary outcomes included ratings of symptoms of ADHD and related disorders, parent stress, and emotion regulation.

Results

Intent-to-treat analyses using hierarchical linear modeling revealed significant group-by-time interactions of medium magnitude (d range = .40 to .52) on parent-rated social skills. Significant group-by-time benefits were also identified for adolescent self-rated social skills as well as the secondary outcomes of parent-rated inattention symptoms, emotion regulation, and parenting stress.

Discussion

CHP appears to benefit social skills along with related characteristics for adolescents with ADHD. Understanding these unique findings for this population informs additional research related to treatment mechanisms and effectiveness trials.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this research was provided by a grant from the Institute for Education Sciences [R305A140356] awarded to the first two authors. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education. Registered at ClinicalTrials.gov – [NCT04480346].