ABSTRACT
For a mental health professional trained in traditional approaches to therapy with children and adolescents, it may be tempting to follow a practice of primarily conducting individual therapy with the youngster, additionally conferring with the parents. However, therapists with current knowledge of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) treatment will be far more likely to conduct behaviorally oriented family therapy to address the primary and secondary behavioral concerns often associated with ADHD. This includes creating structure within the home that facilitates followthrough with instructions, reducing oppositional behavior, alleviating “homework hassles,” and establishing rules and contingencies to prevent and deal with problems. While these strategies will address difficulties occurring within the family, they will not be sufficient to address the youngster’s difficulties at school. Improvements at home likely will not generalize to the school setting, and similar approaches will need to be employed there (1). Ideally, the school personnel will be well-trained in working with youngsters with ADHD, and perhaps school-wide interventions, or at least strategies to assist the particular youngster, are already in place. Often, however, this is not the case. The main point of this chapter is that mental health professionals treating youngsters with ADHD need to be proficient in school consultation skills. Such consultations typically involve visits to the school to develop strategies and to assist with their
implementation. When assessing problems or requesting that particular strategies be implemented, mental health professionals should not rely exclusively on written contact with the school, telephone calls, or using the parents or the youngster him/herself as a conduit.
