Struggling to be heard: A scoping review of user participation in ADHD mental healthcare for children and adolescents

Martinsen, Elin Håkonsen; Mjøsund, Nina Helen; Faugli, Anne

doi:10.2478/sjcapp-2025-0008

Figures & Tables

Studies addressing user participation among young people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

Reference	Aim	Participant characteristics	Study setting	Methods¹
Avisar and Lavie-Ajayi (2014) (62), Israel	To explore experiences of stimulant medication and treatment trajectories among adolescents with ADHD	Age: 12.5–16.5 years 14 adolescents using stimulant medication for ADHD for ≥ 6 months 8 males, 6 females	Private psychology center	Qualitative design using individual semistructured interviews Data analysis: Interpretative phenomenological analysis
Brinkman et al. (2012) (63), US	To elucidate how adolescents with ADHD contribute to medication treatment decisions	Age: 13–18 years 44 adolescents, diagnosed with ADHD 8.7 years on average prior to participation 24 males, 20 females	Community-based pediatric practices	Qualitative design using focus group interviews with open-ended, semistructured questions Recruitment stratified by sex and age Data analysis: Inductive coding
Cheung et al. (2015) (64), China	To explore experiences of adolescents and young adults with ADHD in Hong Kong in accessing treatment and services and coping with ADHD-related impairment, along with their expectations of future treatment	Age: ≥ 16 years 20 patients 16–17 years, 20 patients ≥ 18 years 27 males, 13 females	Specialist health care services	Mixed-methods design using qualitative semistructured interviews, field notes, Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS) to assess severity of ADHD symptoms, and questionnaires on demographics, current medication, symptoms, and severity of impairment Data analysis of semi-structured interviews: Grounded theory
Mikesell et al. (2020), (65), US	To explore children's real-time participation in stimulant medication decisions	Age: 5–11 years 16 children with ADHD, who had received a first-time stimulant medication prescription, and their parents The families were English-speaking	Two community mental health clinics	Analysis of video-recordings of three follow-up visits of medication titration with emphasis on identifying the clinician's Treatment Recommendation inspired by conversation analytic research
Travell and Visser (2006) (66), UK	To explore the experiences, perceptions, and views of young people with ADHD and their parents	Age: 11–16 years 17 adolescents and their parents	Local health education authority	Qualitative semistructured interviews Data analysis: Grounded theory

Struggling to be heard: A scoping review of user participation in ADHD mental healthcare for children and adolescents

Figures & Tables

FIGURE 1.

FIGURE 2.

Studies addressing user participation among young people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

Paradigm

My account