Recognition

Recognize what is really going on.

Your child is being chosen as a subject in a massive unprecedented experiment in using powerful mood altering drugs to modify the behavior of young people. Several pieces of information are vitally important for you to know and understand.

Your Child Is Being Selected Out Because of "Unacceptable" Behavior

Institutional Psychiatry and Compulsory Age-Graded Competitive Education share many things in common. One of these is a primary value on SELECTION. You need to recognize that your child, along with hundreds of thousands of other youngsters, is being selected out based on a judgment that his or her behavior is unacceptable. Psychiatry and Education bear the brunt of a societal mandate to enforce sameness and conformity as evidenced by proper adjustment to institutional standards. There is precious little room for celebration of uniqueness and difference.

Selection Means Diagnosis Means Treatment

You need to recognize the illusion that underlies the entire process of labeling and diagnosing children. Your child is selected and you are referred to a "mental health professional" (a medical doctor psychiatrist or a university doctor psychologist) for an "evaluation" to determine a "diagnosis" and decide whether your child really does have a psychiatric disorder. The truth is that the whole process of psychiatric evaluation and diagnosis is, for the most part, a sham.(1) Once your child is selected, a thoroughly predictable process with thoroughly predictable results is set in motion. It is extremely rare for a child referred to a psychiatrist or psychologist for evaluation of a "disruptive behavior disorder" (DBD) to be given no diagnosis. These people are in the business of giving diagnoses. And DBD’s (including conduct disorders and so-called attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)) are one of those funny diseases where the subjective experience of the adults around the patient determine the presence of the disease. The main criteria for diagnosis have nothing to do with the state of the victim’s body or psyche.

Furthermore, you need to know that diagnosis really is not about describing your child in a way that will give useful information to help enhance development. Psychiatric diagnosis is not descriptive, but prescriptive. Just as referral almost inevitably leads to diagnosis, diagnosis means treatment. When your child is selected out as a behavior problem, he or she is being chosen for "treatment" and "special" services.

Treatment Means Drugs

You need to know that Institutional Psychiatry operates from a very specific viewpoint called Biopsychiatry. Biopsychiatry is guided by very specific assumptions.

First, human distress is a result of "mental illness." Second, "Mental illness" consists of a tremendous (growing all the time) assortment of "diseases," classified together in the psychiatric bible, called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association. By translating human behavior into medical diseases, this manual acts as a key to open the treasure chest of medical health insurance dollars. Incredibly enough, problems with school behavior have been translated into this system. "Treatment" of these disorders is now an extremely profitable and rapidly growing business for the pharmacology industry and psychiatric profession. The third assumption of Biopsychiatry, then, is that these "diseases" are caused by biological and genetic defects in the sick individual. The "treatment" of choice for your poor child is, of course, pharmacological (drugs).

These Drugs Are Dangerous

You are told that these drugs are benign. You need to recognize that this is self-serving misinformation. I will only mention Ritalin, which is by far most popular; an estimated 1,000,000 young people, mostly boys, are on this drug. You probably were not told that Ritalin is "speed," pharmacologically classified with amphetamines, having the same effects, side effects and risks. The FDA classifies Ritalin in a high addictive category, Schedule II, along with amphetamines, cocaine, morphine, opium, and barbiturates. This drug’s adverse reactions are described below.

Excerpt from the Physicians Desk Reference (PDR) on the potential adverse reactions caused by Ritalin:

Nervousness and insomnia are the most common adverse reactions but are usually controlled by reducing dosage and omitting the drug in the afternoon and the evening. Other reactions include hypersensitivity (including skin rash), urticaria [swollen, itching patches of skin], fever, arthralgia, exfoliative dermatitis [scaly patches of skin], erythema multiforme [an acute inflammatory skin disease], with histopathological findings of necrotizing vasculitis [destruction of the blood vessels], and thrombocytopenic purpura [a serious blood clotting disorder]; anorexia; nausea; dizziness; palpitations; headache; dyskinesia [impairment of voluntary muscle movement]; drowsiness; blood pressure and pulse changes, both up and down; tachyucardia [rapid heartbeat]; angia [spasmodic attacks of intense heart pain]; cardiac arrhythmia [irregular heartbeat]; abdominal pain, weight loss during prolonged therapy.

There have been rare reports of Tourette’s syndrome, Toxic psychosis has been reported in patients taking this drug; luekopenia [reduction in white blood cells] and/or anemia; a few instances of scalp hair loss. In children, loss of appetite, abdominal pain, weight loss during prolonged therapy, insomnia, and tachycardia may occur more frequently; however, any of the other adverse reactions listed above may also occur.

"This is the kind of information about a drug that the manufacturer is compelled by law to share with the doctors who will prescribe it. Unfortunately, there is no law requiring that the doctors who prescribe the drug share the information about its potentially damaging or fatal effects with you. That is why I have provided so much information about Ritalin, which applies, as well, to its counterparts."
(Mendelsohn, 1984, pp. 203-4)

These Drugs Do Not Help Your Child

You are told that Ritalin really works, that it is proven effective. What this means is that some children "behave much better" when they’re on Ritalin. Proponents of the drug will tell you that the drug works because it corrects a biological neurological defect in the child. You need to know this is entirely a statement of faith on the order of a religious belief. There is no scientific evidence to show any consistent biological or genetic cause of any problem routinely seen by psychiatrists, most definitely including the so-called DBD’s of school children. Children diagnosed as ADHD do not respond to Ritalin because it corrects a biological defect; they respond because they’re taking an amphetamine. It is a long demonstrated effect of amphetamines that users experience a narrowed focus of attention, concentration on detail, and are less in touch with their real feelings. Any child becomes more docile, obedient and willing to concentrate on boring, repetitive tasks; all desirable qualities in a school setting.

You need to know also that Ritalin is addictive, that it interferes with development (including the brain), and that many children experience other serious effects, including permanent disfiguring tics. As a stimulant, Ritalin can cause the very things it is supposed to cure - inattention, hyperactivity and aggression. Withdrawal effects, like the child getting upset after missing a single dose, are mistakenly interpreted as a sign that the child needs to be put back on medication.

Research has failed to confirm any definitive improvement from drug treatment. They probably didn’t tell you that "years of research and clinical use have failed to confirm any positive long-term effects from Ritalin in behavior or academic performance" (Breggin & Breggin, p. 84)

Recognize Adultism

Adultism is the systematic mistreatment of children and young people simply because they are young, and it is the core oppression here. The pattern is one of massive disrespect; one key to knowing whether you are acting as an agent of this oppression is to query any action toward a young person with the following simple question: Would you treat another adult the same way?

Recognize the Code Word "Potential"

Focusing on a child’s "potential" is subtle adultism. When adults focus on a child’s "potential," they have lost sight of the child. Do not trust the thinking of anyone who keeps emphasizing the "potential" of your child; rather, put your trust in those who can celebrate and delight in who your child already is.

Independence and Responsibility

Perhaps the most frequent concerns I hear from parents are about their children’s responsibility (irresponsibility) and independence (dependence). I really think that much of the problem is that, as a society, we have abandoned our children and have copped out on our responsibility to fully provide what they need to develop well. What I want to offer here, however, is a way to think about these two crucial polarities of independence-dependence and responsibility - irresponsibility that I think will be helpful. I will borrow Jane Healy’s metaphor of the adult as a "scaffold." The idea is that our job as parent is to act as a scaffold for our children, and to avoid falling into false illusions about dependence and responsibility.

If we fall into illusion about independence, we err on the side of providing no support for our child.

If we fall into illusion about dependence, we err by taking too much care and preventing development of a child’s own mastery.

If we fall into illusion about responsibility, we guilt and blame ourselves and/or our child, and forget that responsibility is a part of our inherent nature. Responsibility means "ability to respond." It is our nature to thoroughly enjoy responding to the best of our abilities. If we don’t it’s because we’re in distress, or don’t have the information or relevant skills.

Providing a "scaffold" for your child means that you encourage your child’s own thinking and action (independence), but you are there as support, as model, as coach, as ally (dependence). Isolation does not exist; responsibility is not a burden, but a rich shared experience. You and me, together. One for all and all for one.

Summary:

The bottom line is to recognize that you are being expected to unquestioningly accept a decision for your child that involves him or her being selected out for special treatment and given drugs. You are expected to believe that he or she has a disease and that this special treatment is for his or her own good. You are often made to question your own responsibility and worth as a parent if you choose to resist something that is so obviously necessary and good for your "special" child. The reality as you can see is very different than this Alice-in-Wonderland upside down distortion.