JPC Fall 2023 Conference Description

Empowering Adult Attention Deficit Clients and Clinicians: A Multi-Level Approach.

Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder are challenging to themselves, their families, employers, and therapists. This Seventh Joseph Palombo Center Fall Conference will equip clients and clinicians to work more successfully in understanding and managing this often-undiagnosed disorder in adulthood. It is often overlooked as a diagnosis because of its presentation variability and overlap with other psychiatric disorders.

The Conference will explore the clinical utility of using the Palombo Center's Level of Analysis framework that considers first-level analytical data obtained by screening for ADHD symptoms and impairment using standardized rating scales, ruling out medical causes of inattention and impulsivity such as thyroid disorders, sleep apnea, substance use, or medication side effects. Also, on this objective level, assessing and ruling out other comorbid psychiatric conditions that can mimic mood disorders, anxiety disorders, personality disorders, or learning disabilities.

The next level of analysis is the context in which the person developed. What were the relationships in the client's life? Were there environmental elements in the context that may have affected the client's ability to maintain attention and limit impulsivity? What 'solutions' did the client use to accommodate developmentally to the context in which they found themselves?

On the final level of analysis, what was the client's subjective experience of levels one and two? What self-narrative did they begin to tell themselves about who they are and how they became this way? Ultimately, how does it feel to be? The feeling can be conscious or unconscious, reflecting all lived experiences.

The scaffold of these analyses creates an awareness of how a nonlinear complex adapting self-system develops from a historical and an evolutionary perspective. The methodology suggests multiple therapeutic approaches as new ways to influence a complex adaptive self-system to develop more complexity.