ADHD Among College Students and the Stakeholders being Affected

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ADHD Among College Students
Introduction
ADHD is a major challenge facing college students. From a historical perspective, research on this issue started in the 1990s and has continued to increase in recent years. Before the 1970s, ADHD was perceived as a condition that children outgrew as they matured. However, longitudinal results in the mid-to-late-1990s showed that the symptoms of approximately half to two-thirds of children with ADHD persisted through adolescence and adulthood (Green and Rabiner 559). Many studies conducted recently on college students reveal that ADHD affects the academic outcomes and other socio-economic aspects of the students’ lives. Therefore, stakeholders are increasingly urged to find immediate solutions regarding managing and treating ADHD among college students. This essay will discuss five major stakeholders affected by this problem: students, parents/families, schools/teachers, caregivers, and policymakers. The focus is to review the perspectives of the various stakeholders and establish areas of agreement and disagreement regarding the importance of the problem and the approaches for management and treatment.
Stakeholders
Students
The primary stakeholders in this issue are the students with ADHD. The rationale is that they are the ones who suffer the negative consequences of ADHD and should be the ones helping other stakeholders in developing the necessary treatment and management approaches. The extent of the effects of ADHD on college students has been extensively studied by scholars aiming to determine both the nature of the problem and potential solutions. Primary research by Mak et al. (2022, 1078) revealed that approximately 15.5% of students surveyed had ADHD, and comorbidities were found in 58.4% of this population. The significance of these statistics is that they show that a large number of college students have ADHD, which necessitates the development and implementation of solutions. Studies show that among the key symptoms of ADHD are hyperactivity, inattention, and impulsive interferences that lower the quality of social, academic, and even occupational functioning (Lagacé-Leblanc et al. 131). As the primary stakeholders, students are often at the forefront of research and practice directed at seeking interventions.
The question of how students perceive ADHD can be answered by focusing on the self-reported survey results across the ADHD studies. Most importantly, the effects of ADHD can be understood from the students’ perspective through personal experience. In college, the focus may usually be on the effects of ADHD on academic outcomes and the mechanisms by which ADHD affects academic performance. The functional impairments include difficulties regulating attention, emotions, motivations, time, working memory, and organization/planning (Lagacé-Leblanc et al. 134-136). The result of these impairments is that students cannot pay sustained attention to their studies, which directly reflects in their grades. College students also express facing other challenges in school, especially where support infrastructure is lacking. In this case, these stakeholders and their experiences illustrate that the edu...