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I don't think I said it lately, so I'll say it again: I don't believe small children can be properly diagnosed with mental illness and then treated appropriately. It's not possible. It's hard enough to get a diagnosis and medication protocol correct in adults, who are no longer growing and developing and whose behavior is much more stable and comprehensible. In kids? Come on. That's why I'm feelin' Larry Diller, author of the below article:
Liz Spikol is senior contributing editor of Philadelphia Weekly. She writes the award-winning column The Trouble With Spikol, which began as a chronicle of her struggle with mental illness, and has since expanded into humorous musings on everything from graphic novels to how to use a mop. She also writes the paper's book review column, Lit Gloss. This blog -- named one of the Top 10 Bipolar Blogs of 2007 by PsychCentral -- is about mental illness policy, news, personal journeys and more.
Comments
The Riley case literally made me sick to my stomach when a first read about it -- a doctor using medications to basically zone out a little girl (to the point of death as it turned out) from her very understandable acting out against the parents abusing her -- and who used the medications to continue to abuse her.
That's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest psychiatric theory, as aided and abetted by Nurse Ratched-type parents.
I am one in the pro-psychiatry rather than anti-psychiatry camp; despite the periodic shifts in body chemistry that force me to change drugs, medication in general has helped me.
But I, like everyone else, walked out of the theater horrified when I saw The Constant Gardener. And to remind me it doesn't always happen in the developing world, I always keep a reminder on my bookshelf of the horrendous abuses possible here in the West -- Dark Remedy, perhaps the best ever book about the thalidomide scandal ...
Posted by: Larry Parker | June 27, 2007 08:03 PM