School Mental Health Programming for Youth with ADHD: Addressing Needs Across the Academic Career

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a chronic childhood disorder with impairment experienced early in childhood and persisting though adolescence. Due to the chronic nature of the disorder and the associated functional problems that manifest in the school setting, school mental health practitioners are in an optimal position to facilitate and implement evidence-based interventions to support students with ADHD as they transition through school. This article serves as introduction to the special issue and a commentary on a collection of papers that illustrate how school mental health approaches for ADHD may be conceptualized and applied throughout an academic career. We discuss several issues that emerge from these studies, including research approaches that narrow the gap between research and practice, the importance of interventions that develop competencies across multiple domains of student functioning, the role of school mental health within a multi-modal intervention context, and the policy implications of the findings within this collection of articles. The relationship between the articles in the special issue and these parameters of school mental health interventions for ADHD are discussed, and future directions for this field are suggested.