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Living in a fast-paced, productivity-driven world can be a nurturing environment for new ideas and innovation, but it can also make it easy to get lost in the shuffle and feel overwhelmed. In today’s society, we all have a lot going on. Whether it’s working all day to provide for a family, going to school to get an education, or just trying to balance responsibilities and self-care, it is getting easier and easier to feel stressed and unmotivated. If you are a young adult experiencing the symptoms of ADHD, the difficulties of these things are amplified. This is where the field of psychology comes in. With the increase in knowledge we have gathered through research, there is a great opportunity to give this knowledge away to the people who really need it to promote well-being and positive social change. Specifically, cognitive science highlights the importance of both autobiographical memory and language systems for increasing self-efficacy and promoting well-being. For many, access to this knowledge has been limited in the past and, especially for those with ADHD, it is often difficult to implement the practices introduced by psychologists into their daily lives.

So, what can be done to remedy this issue? Gregory M. Walton proposes a new way of approaching self-help through “wise” interventions. These practices and activities focus on applying what we know about cognitive processes from scientific research into a social, cultural, and economic context that recognizes the pressures of the real world. The findings of cognitive neuroscience research, particularly related to memory and language, have contributed new information to the discourse about ADHD. These findings have started to shift perspectives about the ADHD experience. With this shift in perspective comes a better understanding of the social and environmental pressures that young adults with ADHD are under, which is important for informing interventions. Through these wise interventions, psychologists can bring in a new age of self-help to promote positive change for this group.