Researchers ran a small study of 13 undergraduate students who had ADHD or high ADHD symptoms at a large Western Canadian university. The students ranged in age from 18 to 42 years, and most were women. Most were taking prescribed ADHD medication, and many reported other mental health conditions. Each student took part in a six-week group workshop that met for one hour a week. The workshop was adapted from an adult ADHD therapy manual. Students filled out belonging questionnaires before and after the workshop.
After the workshop, students reported feeling less isolated. Their score on the isolation part of the scale rose from a middle value of 9.00 to 12.00, and ten of the twelve students in that analysis said they felt less alone. Students also reported a moderate rise in their sense of peer support. Three other measures did not change: how supported students felt by faculty, how well they felt faculty understood them, and how comfortable they felt in class.
The study had no comparison group, so it cannot show that the workshop alone caused the changes. All the answers came from self-report. The authors call these results encouraging but limited, and say they need to be repeated. They suggest that being part of a smaller campus community may help students with ADHD feel they belong.
The numbers Stats and what the terms mean
The statistics behind the plain-language claims above.
- Climie, 2026: rise in sense of peer support, effect size d = .66.
What the terms mean:
- d is an effect size. Roughly, 0.2 is small, 0.5 is moderate and 0.8 is large. A minus sign shows the direction of the change, not its size.
Source: Climie E, Miller C, McLaughlin L. Are There Other University Students Like Me with ADHD? An ADHD Skills Workshop. Journal of College Student Development (2026). doi:10.1353/csd.2026.a986511