Mark Kennedy
Dr Mark Kennedy’s main area of research is developmental psychology. He has a PhD in attachment theory and has worked on the English and Romanian Adoptees study since 2012.
Location London, UK
Activity
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Well done to all of you who have made it to our final week. I hope that you find this week as interesting, if not more so, than our previous weeks. Looking forward to reading and responding to your comments and, as always, if you have any questions, please do ask.
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, just to be crystal clear; the short version is that the orange areas are those where we see differences in people with ADHD.
The longer version, taken from the paper, is that this is; Multivariate discrimination weight map for ADHD vs. Controls (unthresholded). Gaussian Process Classification classified ADHD patients and healthy controls with 82.8%...
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, if anyone's interested in learning more about this, there's a recent review on the topic here; https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0169277
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all and a warm welcome to week 3. Lots of you are asking about adult ADHD, so I thought you might be interested in reading an editorial on this, which has recently been published;...
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Sometimes people ask about the long term impact of medication for ADHD. if you're interested, there's a recent blog here; https://www.adhdevidence.org/blog/are-there-adverse-effects-to-long-term-treatment-of-adhd-with-methylphenidate-2
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Mark Kennedy replied to Marek Wojcik
Hi Marek, good points. I see the point about blaming the parents raised occasionally, but it really isn't. It essentially just aims to help parents (and their children). We look at adversity in this week and next.
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all. It's great to see so many people taking part. You might have to bear with me a bit as there are a lot of comments for me to read! If you want to ask a question, please @ me in, so it gets flagged in my notifications :)
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A question I often get asked at around this point is the overlap between attachment and ADHD. We look at this in week 3, but from a symptom view, they are very different. Here are the criteria for attachment disorder for comparison; https://www.cebc4cw.org/search/topic-areas/dsm-5-criteria-for-reactive-attachment-disorder-rad/
Other people are commenting on...
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, many of you will have seen already but if not, we look in more detail at ADHD symptoms in the next step.
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Mark Kennedy replied to Meral Mert
Hi Meral, good question. These rates appear to apply globally (which we come to later) and also are a general sample, which is intended to be representative of the population as a whole,
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, a question that often comes up around here is the use of the term disorder and whether ADHD confers some positives. There's a recent paper which maps somewhat onto this broad issue; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33035524/. In essence though, some traits of ADHD appear to confer some positives, in some contexts. However, when there are a lot of these...
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, just a quick note - "adult onset" ADHD is something people seem keen to learn more about. Not much is currently known, but we look at this in week 2, steps 18 and 19 - so stay tuned for that. Also, it's really important to note that what we know about "adult onset" ADHD comes from longitudinal studies, so it's not as straightforward as just being...
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, it's great to see so many people having joined the course already - and from all over the world. It's also quite reassuring to know that we've included the content people are most looking forward to; whether it's the educational content in week 4, the experiential content in week 2, or what we understand about causation in week 3. I'm really looking...
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, unfortunately this step was left in by error and the data collection is no longer running. Thank you to those who took part.
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, unfortunately this step was left in by error and the data collection is no longer running. Thank you to those who took part.
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, thank you to those who took part. The data collection was only ever intended to collect a small snapshot of leaner's views and data collection has now closed, so the link will likely no longer work.
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, thank you to those who took part. The data collection was only ever intended to collect a small snapshot of leaner's views and data collection has now closed, so the link will likely no longer work.
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Hi Kate, we know why, unfortunately - mass poverty and the ban of contraception etc.
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@VasilenaDzhigreva Hi Vasilena, there are some positives associated with some symptoms, but when there are enough symptoms to result in a diagnosis it can be impairing. So you can see how they persist over time.
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Mark Kennedy replied to Mark Kennedy
@FanoulaSmith Hi Fanoula, I think the distinction here is impairment. It's not to do with what is "normal" per se, but what causes problems for people. So if you have symptoms of ADHD but it's not impairing, you don't have ADHD.
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Hi May, we look at some of these issues in weeks 2 and 3's research showcases but in groups with a history of adversity you see elevated levels of ADHD, so you wouldn't want to rule it out on that basis. However, as you say, you also would not want to over diagnose ADHD.
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@MaryHorvath Hi Mary, I'm a bit late to this but we have content on this at the ends of weeks 2 and 3.
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Hi Gary, apologies if this hasn't been made clear enough for you, but this isn't a teaching exercise, it's a piece of research attached to the course.
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Well done to all of you who have made it to our final week. I hope that you find this week as interesting, if not more so, than our previous weeks. Looking forward to reading and responding to your comments and, as always, if you have any questions, please do ask.
Also, I'm extremely grateful to those of you who have taken part in the research study...
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, sometimes questions pop up here about whether ADHD is either genetic or environmental and that the course as a whole suggests genetic but this suggests environment, which causes confusion, so I thought I'd clarify. The takeaway message is that the "either/ or" distinction is too simplistic and as the evidence becomes more complex, so too must out...
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I know I'm late to this but thought it worth mentioning. There are several relevant issues here. It may be the case that in the general public some people assume that ADHD is caused by parenting, but this doesn't seem to be the case among professionals who tend to see it as genetic. In cases with severe, early deprivation as we see here (which is incredibly...
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Mark Kennedy replied to Mark Kennedy
@HannahHastilow Hi Hannah, good question. We look at some of this in week 4
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, just to be crystal clear; the short version is that the orange areas are those where we see differences in people with ADHD.
The longer version, taken from the paper, is that this is; Multivariate discrimination weight map for ADHD vs. Controls (unthresholded). Gaussian Process Classification classified ADHD patients and healthy controls with 82.8%...
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, if anyone's interested in learning more about this, there's a recent review on the topic here; https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0169277
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all and a warm welcome to week 3. Lots of you are asking about adult ADHD, so I thought you might be interested in reading an editorial on this, which has just been published;...
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Mark Kennedy replied to Mark Kennedy
@AimeeH Hi Aimee, there's a recent paper on this here; https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12402-018-0276-7. Essentially, there's an association (which doesn't necessarily mean causation) and more studies need to be done to unpack what's happening.
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Mark Kennedy replied to Mark Kennedy
@DavidLindop Hi David, there's some emerging evidence on this summarised here, hope it helps; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278584621000361?casa_token=R8eM2n1In0EAAAAA:4umkpNQfVwzMLNJxa-YmH7Iisz4lMz2u6S_WiTQnd-Yi6uAorb77SAcevfiiVbodIiWfA4dQVig
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all. People often wonder about long term outcomes of ADHD medication. It's not a recent study, but the MTA is probably the strongest evidence we have on this topic; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3063150/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=r360
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all. It's great to see so many people taking part. You might have to bear with me a bit as there are a lot of comments for me to read! If you want to ask a question, please @ me in, so it gets flagged in my notifications :)
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Mark Kennedy replied to Mark Kennedy
@ElizabethQuinn Hi Elizabeth, I suppose it depends on the context. In this context, deficit essentially means 'problem with'. So if someone is trying to read a book they want to read and can't, for example, that's considered a problem.
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Mark Kennedy replied to Carol Summers
Good questions, forensic population refers to those who are in the judicial system and often with some mental health issue.
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, people tend to ask here about whether this is "growing out of ADHD", or learning to cope. It's likely to be some combination of the two. In general, there is a reduction of hyperactivity and some people certainly learn coping mechanisms, or niches to compensate, but also, even fewer symptoms can be equally impairing as the demands of adulthood increase.
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A question I often get asked at around this point is the overlap between attachment and ADHD. We look at this in week 3, but from a symptom view, they are very different. Here are the criteria for attachment disorder for comparison; https://www.cebc4cw.org/search/topic-areas/dsm-5-criteria-for-reactive-attachment-disorder-rad/
Other people are commenting on...
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Mark Kennedy replied to Mary Reid
@MaryReid Great question, this is largely due to drops in hyperactivity.
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, many of you will have seen already but if not, we look in more detail at ADHD symptoms in the next step.
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Mark Kennedy replied to Amanda Evans
Great question. It depends where you are in the world but typically, it would reduce the support available.
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Mark Kennedy replied to Li Elce
@LiElce Hi Li, that's an excellent question. I think this paper should answer this; https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/pdf/10.1521/adhd.2006.14.2.1?casa_token=j5Unpf3NfTIAAAAA:1iww4YCj2aeqIpFDJ1WOvdbVjSmfnkjMzaK4X3f8YSdChs22cww9Bc5dG0sXSfQQIuPTwTvGXY44
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, a question that often comes up around here is the use of the term disorder and whether ADHD confers some positives. There's a recent paper which maps somewhat onto this broad issue; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33035524/. In essence though, some traits of ADHD appear to confer some positives, in some contexts. However, when there are a lot of these...
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, just a quick note - "adult onset" ADHD is something people seem keen to learn more about. Not much is currently known, but we look at this in week 2, steps 18 and 19 - so stay tuned for that. Also, it's really important to note that what we know about "adult onset" ADHD comes from longitudinal studies, so it's not as straightforward as just being...
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, it's great to see so many people having joined the course already - and from all over the world. It's also quite reassuring to know that we've included the content people are most looking forward to; whether it's the educational content in week 4, the experiential content in week 2, or what we understand about causation in week 3. I'm really looking...
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Mark Kennedy replied to Mark Kennedy
@MahaAl-Khater Hi Maha - I would say in this case that seems to be the case.
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Good question. On the whole, there don't seem to be gender effects in terms of response to treatment.
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Mark Kennedy replied to Sarah Crossland
Good question. Prof Sonuga-Barke who you've met in this course is developing an app for this.
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Mark Kennedy replied to Rebecca Hailes
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Interesting question - I'm not aware of any studies comparing the two
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You read our minds!
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Mark Kennedy replied to Ola Adeniji
@OlaAdeniji Good question, we look at this later on, but there's very limited evidence on long term follow up at the level of the brain
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Hi Sarah, yes they certainly should be.
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@JohnGeorgeGraham I'm sure you've come to it by now, but we look at this in step 5.
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Good question, medication is a case by case issue though, so this is something a specialist team would be best placed to work through.
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This is a really important point. The research shows fairly clearly that it's quite common for children with ADHD to have parents with ADHD, but this doesn't seem to have translated to interventions well.
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Mark Kennedy replied to Deborah Fisher
I'm glad you found this interesting. The simple fact is that ADHD medication is effective, generally and non-pharma options have a high bar to hit to be as effective.
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Mark Kennedy replied to John George Graham
It does seem that way, doesn't it? However, those with ADHD often have lower activity in certain brain regions and the stimulants upregulate these.
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Mark Kennedy replied to Mark Kennedy
@JacquelineHall Good question. There seems to be an association between ADHD and (lower) vitamin D levels, but it's not clear what the nature of the relationship is, or whether giving people vitamin D would help (obviously it's a good idea to not be vitamin D deficient anyway).
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Well done to all of you who have made it to our final week. I hope that you find this week as interesting, if not more so, than our previous weeks. Looking forward to reading and responding to your comments and, as always, if you have any questions, please do ask.
Also, I'm extremely grateful to those of you who have taken part in the research study...
-
Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, just to be crystal clear; the short version is that the orange areas are those where we see differences in people with ADHD.
The longer version, taken from the paper, is that this is; Multivariate discrimination weight map for ADHD vs. Controls (unthresholded). Gaussian Process Classification classified ADHD patients and healthy controls with 82.8%...
-
Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, if anyone's interested in learning more about this, there's a recent review on the topic here; https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0169277
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all and a warm welcome to week 3. Lots of you are asking about adult ADHD, so I thought you might be interested in reading an editorial on this, which has just been published;...
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Mark Kennedy replied to Mark Kennedy
@SarahIsted Hi Sarah, interesting question. I'm not aware of any research into steroid prescription and ADHD. However there are studied into air quality and ADHD. An association exists, but air quality is associated with SES and other factors - more recent evidence suggests that where these factors are controlled for, the association disappears;...
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, just to clarify, there's not a lot of evidence on MOOCs (although a few studies have popped up in the last year or so), so the aim here is try and get a sense of what works, for who and why. Also, the questionnaires are standardised (i.e., made elsewhere), so wording issues are beyond my control (if I edit them, it means we can't compare results).
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@EmmaEvans Hi Emma, anxiety is (more) common in adult females with ADHD. In primary care, it's common for people to present with associated features, rather than the underlying issues. This is one of the many complications for practitioners. So for example in the case of depression, someone might present with fatigue, headaches and so on.
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@MichaelaO'Connor Just a quick note that I think Michaela is correct here. It's worth noting here though that nothing is set in stone.
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Mark Kennedy replied to Alex Simpson
@AlexSimpson Hi Alex, we look at this later in the course.
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Mark Kennedy replied to Sarah Crossland
@SarahCrossland Hi Sarah, we look at this later in the course.
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Mark Kennedy replied to Jenny Sandler
Hi Jenny, good question. Essentially it's partly to try and rule out other causes, but it's also because ADHD is viewed as neurodevelopmental. It doesn't mean that the symptoms were necessarily problematic at this age, just that they existed.
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@JennySandler I don't think the implication here is that parenting causes the ADHD, but rather that parenting a child with ADHD can present challenges and these are designed to help support parents.
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Hi Jacqueline, we look at this issue later in the week.
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Mark Kennedy replied to Sarah Crossland
@SarahCrossland Hi Sarah, we look at this in the research showcases in weeks 2 and 3.
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Mark Kennedy replied to Catriona Mowat
Hi Catriona, good question. Hopefully this will become clear as we move through this week's content.
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Thanks for picking this up. I would say though that we're not really able to amend standardised questionnaires.
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all. I often get asked about long term outcomes. It's not a recent study, but the MTA is probably the strongest evidence we have on this topic; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3063150/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=r360
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all. It's great to see so many people taking part. You might have to bear with me a bit as there are a lot of comments for me to read! If you want to ask a question, please @ me in, so it gets flagged in my notifications :)
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Mark Kennedy replied to Mark Kennedy
@TankL Not sure I follow. Would you mind elaborating?
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@MichaelaO'Connor It's essentially to rule out other causes and because ADHD is considered to be neurodevelopmental. It just means that the symptoms were there, so they could be there and not affect things for the reasons you suggest.
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Mark Kennedy replied to Mark Kennedy
@MichaelaO'Connor Hi Michaela, this is basically because it's an associated feature. So if a person with ADHD is at higher risk of experiencing emotional dysregulation, someone with emotional dysregulation might not have ADHD. If that makes sense? You wouldn't want to rule out ADHD on the basis of someone not experiencing emotional dysregulation.
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, people tend to ask here about whether this is "growing out of ADHD", or learning to cope. It's likely to be some combination of the two. In general, there is a reduction of hyperactivity and some people certainly learn coping mechanisms, or niches to compensate, but also, even fewer symptoms can be equally impairing as the demands of adulthood increase.
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A question I often get asked at around this point is the overlap between attachment and ADHD. We look at this in week 3, but from a symptom view, they are very different. Here are the criteria for attachment disorder for comparison; https://www.cebc4cw.org/search/topic-areas/dsm-5-criteria-for-reactive-attachment-disorder-rad/
Other people are commenting on...
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, many of you will have seen already but if not, we look in more detail at ADHD symptoms in the next step.
-
Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, a question that often comes up around here is the use of the term disorder and whether ADHD confers some positives. There's a recent paper which maps somewhat onto this broad issue; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33035524/. In essence though, some traits of ADHD appear to confer some positives, in some contexts. However, when there are a lot of these...
-
Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, just a quick note - "adult onset" ADHD is something people seem keen to learn more about. Not much is currently known, but we look at this in week 2, steps 18 and 19 - so stay tuned for that. Also, it's really important to note that what we know about "adult onset" ADHD comes from longitudinal studies, so it's not as straightforward as just being...
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
Hi all, it's great to see so many people having joined the course already - and from all over the world. It's also quite reassuring to know that we've included the content people are most looking forward to; whether it's the educational content in week 4, the experiential content in week 2, or what we understand about causation in week 3. I'm really looking...
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Mark Kennedy replied to Mark Kennedy
@ClaireForder Hi Claire, good question. In that case the person would get a diagnosis of inattentive presentation.
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Mark Kennedy replied to Mark Kennedy
@AnnabelLouiseWalker Hi Annabel, anything I might be able to help clarify?
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Mark Kennedy replied to Andrea Oz
Hi Andrea, great question. Adult onset usually comes from longitudinal studies, so these are people who didn't show symptoms earlier. Also, the brain is constantly changing, but there's not enough evidence on brain changes and adult onset ADHD to know much about this.
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Mark Kennedy replied to Mark Kennedy
@ElaineChong Hi Elaine, great question. We look at the symptoms of ADHD in the course and the equivalent for ASD is here; https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/hcp-dsm.html. So as you can see, they're really very different. However, as you say overlap happens and it can be hard to disentangle behaviours. So for example a person might struggle to pay attention due...
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@AndreaOz Hi Andrea, sorry for the slow response. I think other learners have provided some useful advice here. Without knowing much more context it's hard to advise and the process varies by where you are in the world. However, usually this involves a referral from a GP, which can still apply to private institutions, so I would start there. Failing that, I...
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@KatharineO'Brien Hi Katharine, it's very hard to advise without knowing more (do feel free to email me), but the first person to speak with would be your GP, who should be able to point you to the right person.
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@jtrue Great question. Interestingly, FAS is extremely rare in this group.
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@TessBaldock Hi Tess, not at KCL, but there is one hosted via FL here; https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/autism
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Mark Kennedy replied to Pam Turnbull
@KeirFabian Hi Keir, good question. I've never seen this recognised in the literature, maybe this was based on his own clinical work?
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Mark Kennedy replied to Andrew Webb
@KeirFabian Hi Keir, yes this is an ongoing debate and it's basically a clinical distinction, so a person might have symptoms, but not require help.
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Mark Kennedy replied to Mark Kennedy
@ElleH Hi Elle, gladly; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0469-7.pdf?origin=ppub
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Mark Kennedy replied to Mark Kennedy
@EmilijaKeturakytė Hi Emilija, good question. There are multiple risk factors; being male, risk taking, co-occurring conduct problems and parental substance misuse all being well established.
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Mark Kennedy made a comment
IMPORTANT - PLEASE READ
Hi all, this course is now available on an ongoing basis, rather than being restricted to certain times of year. I'll try not to complicate things here, but what this means is that during the ''off periods'' I might not have as much time to respond. If you have a question, please make sure to @ me in, so that I see them more easily.
