A lapse in ADHD treatment led to mistakes that cost him his job. Can he leave it off his résumé?

Reader: My son was just fired after four months at a new job he had relocated for. It was pretty much his own fault. There was a long lapse in his health insurance and he didn't do what he needed to do to secure his ADHD meds. As a result, he made errors that cost the company money.

He seems to be getting his act together and is going to start applying for new jobs. (And securing his meds.)

Should he include this most recent job on his résumé? Since he just moved to this new city, it could be reasonable that he took this time to settle in. I know he shouldn't lie, but is it okay to omit this job? Or do you have any recommendations as to how he should handle it in interviews? His prior employer would give him a good recommendation.

Karla: In an ideal world, explaining that you had to leave a job to resolve a medical issue that affected your performance wouldn't be a strike against you. Then again, in an ideal world, health care would be easy to obtain and keep regardless of income, marital status or employment, which would have prevented this scenario in the first place.

Since those ideal scenarios aren't available, let's focus on what's practical. Presenting yourself as a job candidate is about emphasizing what makes you look good. A résumé is a highlight reel, not an encyclopedia. And a few months' gap between jobs is pretty standard, even in a good market. In short, omitting that short-lived job from his work history would probably avoid more questions than it raises.

But the world can be surprisingly small, and no one is above Murphy's Law. So if he drops that job from his résumé, he still needs to be prepared to answer the inevitable question if the full story is discovered: Why and how did he leave after such a short tenure?

Answering "it was a bad fit" is one vague option, but it could also raise questions about what exactly made it a bad fit, and whether he's liable to cut and run from any such situation on short notice. The "tending to a medical issue" line is both true and relatable, although it could inspire secret concerns about whether that issue is likely to recur and affect his performance again. If he goes that route, he'll need to come up with a narrative that's straightforward and reassuring while revealing only as much personal detail as he feels comfortable divulging.

Prudent prospective employers will avoid asking him questions that could violate the Americans With Disabilities Act, but if he can preempt their silent concerns and presumptions with his ready-made narrative, so much the better. And an endorsement from his previous employer that emphasizes his diligence and trustworthiness can show that his more recent setback was an aberration.

Beyond interview narratives, he also should consider strategies to ensure he doesn't end up in this situation again. He may want to focus on finding jobs where mistakes won't involve job-imperiling sums of money, or where the system has enough built-in reviews and fail-safes to keep him from being the last line of defense.

The good news is that as awareness and understanding of neurodiversity increases, more forward-thinking employers are seeing ADHD, autism and other processing differences as just another variable to consider in managing an inclusive, high-performing workforce. It's possible he could end up working for a company where he feels comfortable openly discussing his ADHD with his managers and collaborating on solutions and accommodations to ensure he's always giving them his best.

Incidentally, I understand the need to acknowledge your son's role in his own misfortune, but calling it "his fault" doesn't quite sit right, either. Untreated ADHD can make it hard to do even the simple things one needs to do to secure treatment. On top of that, he may have felt compelled to keep forging ahead on his own, masking his struggles and setting himself up for disaster.

My hope is that this is one of those early-adulthood stumbles that does no long-term damage and leaves him savvier -- a hard-won lesson for him, and a sobering reminder to us all of how flimsy our nation's safety net is.