Rania Johns-Mead, Doctor of Clinical Psychology Candidate/Provisional Psychologist, at Deakin University, delivers a video abstract on her JCPP paper ‘Categorical and dimensional approaches to the developmental relationship between ADHD and irritability‘.
Authors; Rania Johns-Mead, Nandita Vijayakumar, Melissa Mulraney, Glenn Melvin, George Youssef, Emma Sciberras, Vicki A. Anderson, Jan M. Nicholson, Daryl Efron, Philip Hazel, Tim J. Silk
First published: 11 May 2023
Open Access paper doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13818
Rania Johns-Mead is a candidate in the Doctor of Psychology (Clinical) program at Deakin University, Melbourne Australia. She is working with the Cognitive Neuroscience Unit to complete her thesis, investigating the course, socioemotional correlates, and neurodevelopmental underpinnings of irritability in the context of ADHD. Rania has a professional background in youthwork, and is particularly interested in trajectories of mental health issues during childhood and adolescence. Over the course of her studies, she has developed a further interest in how neurodevelopmental and neurocognitive research inform interventions and diagnostic considerations in clinical practice.
Discussion
I think the irritability is a result of frustration from having to fit into a system that is not built with your needs in mind. Neurodiversity brings with it great opportunities for creativity and innovation but is stifled at school and held back because there is a lack of social coaching available in most schools and an expectation that everyone can cope with the way lessons are taught. Instead of looking at how to better meet the child’s needs there is an emphasis on how the child must meet the school’s needs so that now there is a scientific paper that says irritability is a neurological problem rather than an emotional one in reaction to the environment. ADHD people are drawn to risk and novelty so can you imagine how boring it must be to sit in a classroom repeating things over and over. This is where the irritability comes from.
Really impressed with the results of this researcher. Some unexperienced groups exclude ADHD diagnosis if the patient has been irritable (an acted upon this) demonstrating wrongly that there is no association.