Using a narrative approach to explore identity with adolescents who have been given a diagnosis of ADHD

Taking a narrative approach, this research aims to explore conceptualisations of identity positioning held by four adolescents who have been given a diagnosis of ADHD. The Bicycle of Life (Leger, 2016) is used as a tool to elicit young people’s narratives by providing a space for them to consider their strengths, values and resources, significant places and events in the past, future dreams and goals, the people who will accompany them on their journey and the obstacles that they experience along the way in order to answer the research questions: What do the young people’s BoL narratives reveal about their identity positioning? How might the BoL’s ‘obstacles in the road’ that young people encounter affect their identity positions? The research uses narrative oriented inquiry (Hiles & Čermák, 2008) as its methodology, which provides a six-step analysis method to allow a multi-layered interpretation exploring how narratives are told as well as their content. The findings show that using the BoL as a narrative framework with young people privileged their voice and supported them to identify and communicate their strengths, values and preferred identity positions which emerged through over-arching themes such as having a good sense of humour, being connected and supported, being a keen sportsman and being an animal-lover. The Road Conditions of Life stage of the framework elicited a rich conceptualisation of the challenges that the YP experience, some of the subject positions that are imposed on them and the dominant narratives surrounding them. Some of the obstacles identified by young people in this research included distractions, anger, the expectations in school, anxiety, the school environment and being excluded. Using a narrative framework also provided a space for young people to make reference to the diagnosis of ADHD that they were given. In this research all four young people had different perspectives on the diagnosis that they had been given, ranging from acceptance of it as a helpful way of explaining some of their individual characteristics and the challenges they experience, to rejection of it as an imposed subject position without any explanatory power.