This is how children are born, just like other children may be born with physical disabilities. As Dr. Skip Baker said as he presented on ADHD two weeks ago, “Mental illness is not opinion. It is science.”
Indeed. As he showed MRI slides of brains with various disorders, it would be difficult for the denying parent to not consider their child’s behavior is a physiological issue. Just as a person with diabetes takes glucose tests that show results, so can brain imaging confirm children have certain disorders that if treated can change their lives — ceasing maladaptive patterns of behaviors and coping and self medicating through drugs and alcohol.
This is why I started the series on this topic last year: If we do not educate ourselves and help our minor children, no one else will. And behavior that a parent knows is somehow not typical often needs support and knowledge. Parents need to know that it is in their hands to give their child the life they require to learn to cope. And that often means diagnosis, therapy and medication.
One of the greatest fallacies I encounter is parents thinking these medications are addicting or unnecessary. Another is that their children are “really smart,” as if that speaks against mental illness. There is no evidence that mental illness and low IQ are synonymous. In fact, the opposite is true. These children usually range in the high IQ level — very, very smart to put it simply.
I specialize in depression, bipolar, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and ADHD for the very purpose that families do not always know where to turn or what to do.
