Attachment and ADHD in Relation to Adolescents Academic Self-Concept and General Self-Esteem

Previous studies have identified ADHD and insecure attachments as co-occurring factors that negatively predict an individual’s self-concept. The extant literature has not considered how co-occurring ADHD behaviors and specific attachment characteristics (such as emotional availability) as dimensional constructs may relate to the academic self-concept and general self-esteem. This study aimed to determine how co-occurring, dimensional models of ADHD behaviors and attachment characteristics relate to the academic self-concept and general self-esteem of upper secondary school students in England. ADHD behaviors and attachment characteristics were regressed onto the academic self-concept and general self-esteem of students, with interactions tested using latent-interaction structural equation modeling (LI-SEM). Results showed that ADHD behaviors and attachment characteristics negatively predicted general self-esteem in an additive fashion. However, only ADHD behaviors and emotional availability were found to additively predict the academic self-concept. No interactions between ADHD behaviors and attachment characteristics reached statistical significance. It was concluded that the co-occurrence of attachment characteristics and ADHD behaviors were likely to lead to more frequent negative feedback than in cases of single manifestation, due to the greater frequency of academically contrary behavior which would account for the negative additive effect exhibited.