Understanding the Day-to-Day Process of Stress and Coping Among Both Individuals with Spinal Cord Injury and Their Primary Emotional Support Providers: Effects on Health, Mood, Functional Ability, and …

Approximately 4 percent of Canadian children are diagnosed with Attention–Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Their symptoms pose significant coping challenges for the child as well as for the parents and are often comorbid with other mental health problems. Indeed, the greatest impairment appears to occur in families of children who have not only ADHD, but also comorbid disorders. However, family factors associated with disorders comorbid with ADHD have received relatively little attention in past studies, with most studies focusing on comorbid oppositional or conduct problems, and few studies examining comorbid anxiety disorders in children with ADHD. Sharon Lee is studying parenting practices associated with childhood ADHD and co-occuring anxiety disorders, She will be comparing parent-child interactions in children with ADHD and comorbid anxiety, children with each disorder alone, and a control group. Analyses will examine how parental responsiveness relates to child comorbid anxiety over and above parental levels of anxiety. This research will help us to understand how parenting style may be related to comorbid anxiety in children with ADHD and such knowledge will be useful in tailoring the empirically-supported parenting interventions used for childhood ADHD to more fully account for the presence of comorbid anxiety.