SNG Conference - Amori Y. Mikami, Ph.D.

Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are often disliked by their peers, have few friends, and experience poor relationship quality in any friendships they do have. These social impairments exacerbate later maladjustment, and can prove resistant to psychopharmacological or behavioural interventions that are typically used to address the core symptoms of ADHD. In this talk, I argue that ameliorating behavioural and social skills deficits in children with ADHD is a necessary but not sufficient condition for increasing peers’ liking. I present findings suggesting that encouraging the peer group to be more socially inclusive, tolerant, and welcoming of children with ADHD may be promising as an adjunctive method of treating the peer problems common in ADHD populations.

About the Speaker

Dr. Amori Yee Mikami is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, where her research focuses on peer relationships among children and adolescents. Her studies aim to uncover innovative ways in which parents and teachers encourage children’s friendships in order to improve existing interventions for peer problems in the population of youth with Attention- Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder. Dr. Mikami received her BA and MA in Psychology from Stanford University in 1998, her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from UC Berkeley in 2004, and completed clinical internship and postdoctoral fellowship at UC San Francisco. She is a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar and has active research projects funded by Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Institute for Education Sciences (USA). http://peerlab.psych.ubc.ca