(PS1-73) The Effect of Self-compassion Writing Exercises on Procrastination in College Students with ADHD

Background: Procrastination is associated with more negative academic (Kim & Seo, 2015) and mental health outcomes in college students, including stress and anxiety (Sirois & Tosti, 2012). Since college students with ADHD are at a high risk of experiencing adversity in these domains, including anxiety and depression (Kessler et al., 2006), lower college GPAs, and higher college dropout rates (Weyandt et al., 2013) than neurotypical individuals, procrastination may be an especially concerning behavior in these students. Adults with ADHD may also procrastinate more frequently than neurotypical individuals (Oguchi et al., 2021; Wood et al., 2021). Hence, procrastination has been a target of clinical approaches for adults with ADHD for over two decades (Ramsay, 2002; Safren, 2006), including therapies adapted for individuals with ADHD, such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (Gholipourkovich et al., 2018; Piri et al., 2020; Munawar et al., 2021). Further, recent studies have suggested adults with ADHD may generally have lower mean levels of self-compassion than neurotypical adults (Beaton et al., 2020). Thus, we are interested in whether a self-compassion-based approach could reduce procrastination in college students with ADHD.

Present study: We aim to investigate the effect of self-compassion writing exercises on procrastination among college students who have ADHD. We hypothesize that (1) students who complete self-compassion exercises will procrastinate less than those who complete control exercises, (2-3) that reactions to one’s procrastination behavior, particularly reduced self-criticism and increased self-efficacy for self-regulation of procrastination, may mediate the effect of such self-compassion writing exercises on procrastination, and (4) that self-compassion exercises will reduce self-criticism following a procrastination episode.

Methods: To test these hypotheses, 200 college students who were diagnosed with ADHD and show adult symptoms will be randomized to complete either self-compassion writing exercises (experimental) or neutral writing exercises (control). Then, each day for four days, participants will record their study habits and plans via brief daily surveys, which also measure daily procrastination, self-criticism, shame, and self-efficacy for regulating procrastination. Afterward, the students will complete another survey to indicate the level of automatic thoughts and self-critical thoughts related to procrastination they experienced during the study.

Results and

Conclusion: Recruitment is ongoing and expected to be completed by November 2024. The first and fourth hypotheses will be tested by t-test, with condition as the independent variable and total minutes procrastinated and total score on daily self-criticism items as the dependent measures.  Bootstrap mediation will be used for hypotheses 2 and 3. To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the effects of self-compassion writing exercises in adults with ADHD and thus could contribute to our understanding of how self-compassion may affect ADHD symptoms and related behaviors. The study may also inform approaches for promoting academic wellness in college students with ADHD.