Final Speech on ADHD and the Challenges Faced by College Students

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Final Speech
Hi friends. It is always a pleasure to have the opportunity to share ideas about the issues that affect our welfare as students. As you may be aware, ADHD has become one of the most significant challenges to many college students due to its associated psychosocial impacts resulting from functional impairments, including inattention, moods, impaired working memory, and self-monitoring problems, which affect academic performance. Besides, a recent study by (Gu et al. 1) has associated ADHD college students with increased risk for anxiety, depressive symptoms, laziness/day-time sleepiness, physical illness, risk sexual behaviors, increased tobacco usage, and increased dependency on drugs and alcohol. However, despite the impacts of ADHD on our academic and social welfare, we seem unaware of the effective interventions to manage the condition. Moreover, it is unpleasing that, as the enlightened and educated lot, we allow myths, misconceptions, and misperceptions to perpetuate in our families and schools, especially regarding ADHD's treatment and causes. With the significant current research available regarding the prevalence of ADHD in learning institutions, our collective responsibility is to go the extra mile to help improve the management of ADHD and reduce its impacts not only in our schools but also at our homes.
However, it is disheartening that we are often unaware of ADHD's prevalence and impact on student welfare. Although the treatment and management of ADHD is the responsibility of caregivers, being conscious of the direct effect on our studies and social and family welfare will make us view the management of this condition as a collective responsibility. I know in the past few decades, there has been a standard view among the community that ADHD was a condition for children and that children outgrow the disease as they mature. However, significant research from the 1990s, for instance, the study by (Green and Rabiner 559), has shown that ADHD conditions in children persisted through adolescence to adulthood. Today, a current survey on the USA colleges shows that 2% to 8% of college students meet the criteria for ADHD. Another primary research by Mark et al. (2022, 1078) shows that approximately 15% of the students surveyed had ADHD, with 58.4% comorbidities found in this population. These statistics show that ADHD is a common condition in our midst, affecting our colleagues and us either knowingly or unknowingly.
On the other hand, the impacts of this condition on our academic welfare are well documented with the common functional deficits related to reduced attention, self-monitoring, and mode regulation abilities culminating into academic failures such as lower grades, reduced or prolonged graduation periods, high rates of academic probation and the generally poor quality of life. To make the situation worse, most students with ADHD have been found to exhibit high levels of anxiety, depressive symptoms, laziness, suicidal thoughts, physical inactivity, risky sexual behaviors, and an increased tendency to abuse drugs. As a result, the direct and adverse impact of ADHD on our social, health, and academic welfare, requires us to take an active r...