Mental disorder – Our Staff:

Another Study by Captain Obvious: “Parental Death Has Major Impact on Depression Risk in Youth”

Leave a Comment / Depression, Dr. Dathan Paterno, Mental disorder, Mental Health, Posttraumatic stress disorder / By Dathan Paterno

by: Dr. Dathan Paterno

Hold on to your seats. It seems as though the psychiatric community has discovered another gem. Here’s the shocker: when a parent dies, children often become depressed.

I know, it really is amazing. Thank goodness we have millions of dollars funding this kind of invaluable research. I’m sure most of us have been running around supposing that parental death would have little or no impact on today’s youth.

Another key phrase that one finds in just about every study published: “There is an urgent need for research to understand the course and consequences of childhood bereavement in order to guide interventions”. This essentially is begging for more money to continue funding the researchers’ critical work in psychobabblizing the pain and experience of youth.

I do have a serious criticism for this study. “The most common problems kids have are depression, posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD], and intense grief,” said the lead researcher. The problem here is that Depression and PTSD are supposedly mental disorder; the inherent assumption in the definition of these supposed diseases is that they are not normal responses to life stresses. But who in their right mind can distinguish between grief that is “healthy, normal, regular” and that which is inappropriate or abnormal? Isn’t depression a normal response to severe loss and trauma? Isn’t depression a function or manifestation of grief? Why must the mental health community insist on pathologizing normal human behavior and emotion?

Let’s just call grief and the depression, anxiety, confusion, dysregulation, lack of focus, lack of drive, sense of purpose, and meaning that ensues from that grief something radically new. Let’s call it normal.

Reason #117 Why ADHD Is a Baloney Disorder

Leave a Comment / Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Child, David Stein, Mental disorder, Mental Health, Parenting, Psychiatry / By Dathan Paterno

by: Dr. Dathan Paterno

If ADHD is really a mental illness, a neurobehavioral or even neurological disorder, it should not be cured so simply by parents. But it is cured that simply*.

Many clinicians have worked with children diagnosed with all three types of ADHD—Inattentive, Hyperactive-Impulsive, and Combined—by equipping the child’s parents to enact and enforce consistent, strict, fair, and loving limits and boundaries. Dr. David Stein is one psychologist who has gotten astounding success with children formerly diagnosed with ADHD. Howard Glasser has taught scores of schools how to provide appropriate behavioral intervention to radically change children who once seemingly could not behave properly in a classroom.

I have worked with children for 18 years in a variety of settings, including schools, residential homes, inpatient hospitals, and private practices. It is a joy and pleasure to work with parents who want to be the agent of change in their child’s life and who commit to doing so without a diagnosis. Almost every one of those families—when they consistently and properly employ reasonable discipline—have transformed their child from one who “has ADHD” to one who does not. Many of the children had been diagnosed ADHD by professionals who are eminent in the field of child psychiatry.

Heck, if I can train parents to make such fundamental change in their children and cure a “serious neurological disorder” in such a short time and with such simple principles and techniques, I should be up for a Noble Peace Prize. I’m not holding my breath.

*Notice I did not say “easily”, but “simply”. Reasonable discipline is simple. Enacting and enforcing it can be very difficult for parents who do not know how or lack the will or ability to do so. Some parents are so locked into permissive parenting or rely on methods that worked well for one child that they can’t conceive of another way to do things. Others are so overworked, overstressed, and overwhelmed that they simply do not have the will. Yet others are stuck parenting on their own with no support from spouse and other adults. This makes reasonable discipline genuinely difficult, but it does not change the reality that if proper limits are enacted and enforced, the child will respond to them—usually rather quickly.