Blog

  • ADHD at Work: Handling Stress and Emotional Overload

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    Success at work often depends on juggling competing priorities, shifting between tasks, managing deadlines, and collaborating with colleagues while remaining organized and focused. For adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), workplace demands can require significantly more mental effort.

    “Adults with ADHD aren’t typically struggling because they lack intelligence, motivation, or capability,” says Kathleen Woodward, nationally certified school psychologist and clinical manager at Pearson Assessments. “The issue is often a mismatch between environmental demands and executive functioning capacity rather than a lack of ability.”

    More than half of adults with ADHD were diagnosed in adulthood. Although conversations about ADHD often center on productivity, planning, and organization, the disorder can also take an emotional toll. Adults with ADHD might find it harder to regulate emotions, recover from setbacks, handle criticism, and cope with chronic stress.

    “Over time, that cognitive and emotional load can become exhausting,” Woodward adds. “Individuals might appear highly successful externally while privately experiencing significant fatigue, anxiety, or self-doubt.”

    Adults with ADHD also bring valuable strengths to the workplace, including creativity, resilience, adaptability, and strategic thinking. With the right support, they can thrive.

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  • Emotional Regulation in Adult ADHD

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    Carys Evans is passionate about her work. As a senior UX designer for Pearson Qualifications, she is an integral part of a team that designs digital products for the brand.

    After Evans was diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), she learned that emotional dysregulation made it harder to manage workplace stress, adapt to different work styles, and navigate conflict. It took a toll on her mental health.

    “I had not really anticipated how strong the connection was between emotional regulation, mental health, and the ability to manage workloads,” she says.

    For many of the 15.5 million American adults diagnosed with ADHD, emotional regulation can be a struggle. ADHD can affect the way people process frustration, handle stress, and regulate emotions, leading to high anxiety or angry outbursts, low tolerance for frustrating situations, mood swings, unpredictable emotions, and difficulty calming down.

    Although emotional dysregulation is increasingly recognized as part of ADHD, many adults grow up believing they are oversensitive, reactive, or bad at coping with stress and uncertainty. In undiagnosed adults, these issues are often the red flags that set them on a journey toward diagnosis.

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  • Beyond language: An SLP’s perspective on cognitive assessment with RBANS

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    How RBANS complemented language assessment and supported clinical decision making in adult rehabilitation

    As an SLP, you're often asked to make decisions that go beyond language alone—particularly when working with adults with suspected cognitive changes. Understanding a patient's attention, memory, and overall cognitive status can play an important role in shaping referrals, treatment plans, and expectations for recovery. 

    Maria Brask, MS, CCC-SLP, spent years in inpatient rehabilitation, regularly using RBANS® with adults recovering from stroke and traumatic brain injury. Now, she shares how cognitive assessment fit into her clinical workflow—and why it matters for your patients. 

    In this conversation, Maria shares how RBANS fit into her clinical workflow, how it complemented the language assessments she was already using, and how the results helped inform treatment planning, referrals, and patient care.

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  • Beyond the Memory Test: Why the Future of Cognitive Assessment Must Be Multidimensional

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    Memory loss has long been considered the defining hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. But there is more to the disease than misplaced keys, forgotten names, and other memory lapses. Reducing Alzheimer’s to memory alone oversimplifies a disease that affects multiple aspects of thinking, behavior, and daily functioning.

    As researchers develop more sophisticated biomarkers, disease-modifying therapies, and prevention strategies, they also recognize that the tools used to measure cognition must evolve. Alzheimer’s affects far more than memory, and understanding the disease requires assessing the full range of cognitive and behavioral changes that patients experience.

    This theme emerged during the third episode of “The Progress Profile: Alzheimer’s Research in Focus,” in which Maria Carrillo, Ph.D., chief science officer and medical affairs lead at the Alzheimer’s Association, joined moderator Dr. John Harrison to discuss why the field is broadening its view of cognitive decline.

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  • SAIL CoLab, Inc. Acquires SSIS Assessment Assets from NCS Pearson to Launch Comprehensive Social & Behavioral MTSS Solution for PreK - 12th Grade Students

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    SCOTTSDALE, AZ — August 17, 2026 — SAIL CoLab, Inc. has officially acquired the Social Skills Improvement System (SSIS™) assessment assets from NCS Pearson, effective June 30, 2026. With this strategic acquisition, SAIL CoLab becomes the official publisher of all SSIS assessment and intervention products, uniting them into a singular, highly cohesive system dedicated to improving children and youths' social emotional skills and behavioral health. 

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  • Unlocking deeper insights: A guide to the new scores available with BOT-3

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    For years, the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency™ (BOT™) has been known and trusted for comprehensive evaluation of gross and fine motor skills across a wide range of ages and ability levels. 

    But did you know that the latest edition—the BOT™-3—builds on that strong foundation with several brand-new scores that give clinicians even more clinically meaningful information to work with?

    In this post, we'll break down each of these new scores, explain what they measure, and highlight how they can enhance your assessment and intervention planning.

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  • Beyond Longevity: Why Women's Brain Health Deserves More Attention

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    Women account for almost two-thirds of people living with Alzheimer's disease. For years, the higher prevalence was largely attributed to the fact that women tend to live longer than men. But during a recent episode of The Progress Profile: Alzheimer's Research in Focus podcast, Phyllis Ferrell, DrPH, MBA, innovator, investor, and incubator for brain health and longevity, argued that explanation no longer tells the whole story.

    In a conversation about the future of Alzheimer's research, moderator Dr. John Harrison, engaged Ferrell in conversation about the ways advances in biomarkers, cognitive testing, and precision medicine are revealing important biological differences between men and women. Their discussion highlighted an emerging area of research that could reshape everything from clinical trial design to early diagnosis and treatment.

    “We're learning something that we've known in other disease states,” Ferrell said. “Women's brains are not just little men's brains.”

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