Today ‘labels’ for behavioural and learning difficulties are used very quickly. Parents are soon told that the inattentiveness of their child is caused by ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), the restlessness by ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) and the reading, spelling or writing problem is due to Dyslexia.
Children who are clumsy and show problems with coordination are said to be suffering from Dyspraxia. Parents may be quite relieved to hear that there is a medical term for the learning or behaviour problem but in fact, these labels do little to really help the child.
The symptoms shown by children are only clues to underlying causes. They are not signs of mental disorders or illnesses and neither can they be cured by drugs (medication).
At best, some symptoms may be managed by medication, which helps over the short-term, but caution must be used here as most of the drugs used for these labels carry severe side effects and as yet unknown long-term effects on the brain and body.
It is far better to understand that many of these problems are caused by neurological disorganisation, or developmental delay, which can be improved or overcome without the use of substances.
A danger of using labels lies in the fact that all too often the uniqueness of the child is lost and valuable clues to what may underlie the behaviour are missed. The problems that the child shows through behaviour are diagnosed and labelled and then the labels – or implicit presumptions – are treated rather than the child.
This practice follows what is known as the Cartesian medical model, by which a condition is diagnosed and a treatment is prescribed according to a set of symptoms.
The book used for this purpose with most learning and behaviour problems is called the DSM-IV (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition), used widely by professionals such as psychologists, psychiatrists, paediatricians, neurologists and medical doctors.
In this way, the accepted treatment for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD), for example, is drugs and behaviour modification therapy.
The root cause of the particular pattern of behaviour in a particular individual isn’t sought and the treatment may not be successful.
In short, the symptoms (behaviours) are treated rather than the causes. Little wonder that the success rate for overcoming learning problems in “ADHD” children is so low.
There are other repercussions to such diagnoses as well. To start with, the mere fact of a ‘diagnosis’ makes a problem associated with learning a medical condition. Parents, teachers and therapists develop certain expectations associated with the commonly heard diagnoses of ADHD, inattentiveness, and others.
These expectations lead to certain actions by the teacher, usually beginning with a recommendation that the child undergo assessment by an Occupational Therapist, Speech Therapist or Neurologist. Sadly, these seem to be the only avenues of help that teachers are trained to know about.
Requests for change of structure at home often follow, as well as the very frequently expressed desire that the child be medicated.
What does all this convey to the diagnosed child, and what does it do to his self image?
He is told (or he overhears) that he has a medical condition. His teacher considers him a disruptive influence in the class. Maybe he leaves the classroom periodically for remedial teaching.
What is he to conclude about himself?
Obviously he has a problem; less obvious but not illogical is his understanding that he is not responsible for his behaviour. Nobody is responsible for a medical condition – but be thankful that few children know that their behaviour is actually classed in DSM-IV as a mental disorder.
Drugs as a ‘solution’ of choice
Children with learning problems must take the drugs the doctor prescribes, every day without fail, in order to get through a school day’s challenges. That is, the drug ‘solves’ the problem. In fact, these children find that the drugs do; they can function better.
They like that because every child wants to succeed. So they become dependent on the medication as a means to achieve – unrelated to physiological aspects of addiction.
Amy illustrated this point during her ILT assessment. She was quick to point out that she could not be expected to concentrate because she had complied with the usual request of ILT practitioners to not take her pill (Ritalin) that morning.
Why are people so reliant on drugs?
The answer seems to lie in the fact that we’re a solution-oriented culture. We want the quick fix and expect doctors to solve whatever ailment we have that interferes with a fully functional engagement in life.
Doctors are trained to heal with drugs and, although many are recently embracing a more holistic approach to healing, most may feel pressured by their patients to offer a prescription.
Published research finds nothing to define a cause of many of these learning problems. There is no physiological ‘marker’ that shows up on any kind of standard medical testing procedure that indicates ADHD or other disorders that interfere with learning.
In other words, there is no standardised test for attentional problems or dyslexia, dyspraxia and so on. There is only the behaviour reported by teachers or parents. So doctors continue to resort to the group of drugs presented by the manufacturer as a treatment specific to whatever condition has been diagnosed.
