This study interviewed 125 young adults who had been diagnosed with ADHD as children. They came from four sites of a long-running study called the Multimodal Treatment Study of ADHD (MTA). Their average age was 24.40, and most were male (76%). The paper does not say whether they still met the criteria for ADHD at the time.
In the interviews, 65 of the 125 people described some part of their ADHD as depending on their surroundings. They talked about restlessness, boredom and shifts in focus and interest. Some jobs or school settings made these problems worse. Others seemed to ease them, or turned traits like high energy into strengths.
Settings that fit well tended to be stressful and challenging, new and full of multitasking, busy and fast-paced, physical or hands-on, or interesting in themselves. Slow, desk-based or detail-heavy work was described as harder. Even in a job that fit well, some parts stayed hard.
The authors call these findings preliminary. They rest on people's own accounts, which can be biased. Some improvements may also come from other changes in adulthood rather than from work. Job choice is often limited by where people live, their schooling and the jobs on offer. Easing symptoms at work did not fix problems in other parts of life. The authors suggest that identifying work settings where these young adults do well could be a useful addition to treatment.
Source: Lasky A, Weisner T, Jensen P, et al.. ADHD in context: Young adults’ reports of the impact of occupational environment on the manifestation of ADHD. Social Science & Medicine (2016). doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.06.003