417: ADHD and Emotional Regulation. A 'Mind the Kids' podcast

Please email ppls.adhdstudy@ed.ac.uk if you would like to learn more.

Why do so many young people with ADHD find it harder to bounce back from difficult emotions — and what can actually help?

This episode of the Mind the Kids podcast features Professor Aja Murray, Professor of Developmental Psychology of Mental Health at the University of Edinburgh's School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences. Aja's research examines mental health across the lifespan, with a particular focus on the links between ADHD symptoms and co-occurring mental health issues such as anxiety and depression, especially during adolescence.

Hosted by Mark Tebbs, the conversation explores the Mental Health in the Moment ADHD (MHIM-ADHD) programme of research, funded by the Medical Research Foundation, conducted with colleagues including Dejla Hoxha, Daria Melashenko, and Amanda Russell at the University of Edinburgh, alongside guidance from the project's young person and lived-experience advisory group.

The discussion opens by unpacking two key terms: ADHD, characterised by difficulties with attention, hyperactivity and impulsivity and diagnosed in up to around 8% of children and adolescents globally, and emotion dysregulation, the breakdown of the processes people use to identify, manage and respond to their emotions. Aja explains how emotion dysregulation, while not a core symptom of ADHD, is a commonly associated feature that can show up as intense or changeable emotions, emotions that take longer to settle, or emotionally driven behaviour such as lashing out.

Drawing on ecological momentary assessment methods that capture emotion regulation as it unfolds in daily life, alongside longitudinal data, Aja shares findings on how emotion dysregulation sits on the pathway between ADHD symptoms and elevated risk of anxiety and depression, and how patterns like rumination are a particularly important feature of this pathway. The conversation also explores rejection sensitivity dysphoria — the tendency to anxiously or angrily anticipate social rejection — a concept gaining significant attention within the ADHD community. The project's lived-experience advisory group specifically recommended including a measure of rejection sensitivity, informed by broader work on co-producing adolescent mental health research with young people (Health Expectations). Findings show rejection sensitivity dysphoria is linked to more negative emotions day to day, but that positive peer interactions can bu