News, commentary, resources, and more about Emotional and Behavioral Disorders.
EBD Blog, which has been housed on my U.Va.-issue server since its inception, will soon move to it’s formal location at http://EBDBlog.com. If you have a link or bookmark to it that has johnl.edschool in it, please update it.
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Sphere: Related ContentUnder the title “Troubled Children: Parenting as Therapy for Child’s Mental Disorders” in the New York Times, Benedict Carey has an extended article about parents using behavioral techniques to address the problems experienced by children with ADHD, acting out, Tourettes, and other Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. Mr. Carey focused his article on a family, the Popczynskis, who successfully learned to employ management procedures by working with William Pelham and his colleages at the the University of Buffalo.
Continue reading ‘Family therapy’
Sphere: Related ContentOn the blog over at Psych Central under the title “Scanning for Schizophrenia,” Sandra Kiume has a post about developments in prediction of schizophrenia. Genetic risk in combination with MRI scans is increasing the accuracy of predictions, according to Ms. Kiume’s reading of data from the Edinburgh High Risk Study. Link Ms. Kiume’s entry.
Sphere: Related ContentIn contrast to popular theories about the origin of autism, which are usually based on relatively weak evidence, there are some scientifically strong developments in the study of genetics and autism over the past 5-10 years (although the effort is actually older than that). Researchers at a variety of institutions around the world are finding converging evidence that genes probably play an important part is explaining the etiology of autism.
One important effort is the International Molecular Genetic Study of Autism Consortium and another is the (US) National Alliance for Autism Research Autism Genome Project. These efforts represent collaborating research teams studying many families worldwide; their aim is to map parts of the human genome that might account for an inherited risk for autism. They include teams from Great Britan, the US, Ireland, and Canada (and other countries). As these efforts (and other research programs) gain momentum, playing off each others’ findings, the pace of increase in our understanding of the role genetics play in autism will increase more and more rapidly. To learn more about the genetics of autism, start at Exploring Autism.
Links:
The Weblog Awards folks announced the competition for best blogs, including one for the Best Educational Blog. Here are the entrants:
Here’s the link to the page where one can vote.
Sphere: Related ContentOver on Mentor Matters Mrs. Ris has reported on her efforts to help a child with some substantial Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. Mrs. Ris is an experienced teacher who’s seen some difficult students, but she’s decided that this particular boy needs something more than what she and her team can provide. Having had to make similar recommendations, I know how difficult it is to make such decisions. But, for some children, the plain fact is that sometimes more help is needed. Mrs. Ris explains this well.
I’m not sure if this is the same child to whom she referred when she welcomed a sixth child to her classroom, but there are two recent posts—relief and the waiting game—that tell the current story.
Sphere: Related ContentFor students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders who make the transition to post-secondary education and for their families, the challenges are substantial, according to a story entitled “Off to College on Their Own, Shadowed by Mental Illness” by Lynette Clemetson of the New York Times. Ms. Clemetson uses two separate cases to illustrate her observations.
Her mother called it a negotiable proposition. But to Jean Lynch-Thomason, a 17-year-old with bipolar disorder who started college this fall, her mom’s notion to fly from their home in Nashville to her campus in Olympia, Wash., every few weeks to monitor Jean’s illness felt needlessly intrusive.
“I am so totally aware of the control you have over me right now,” Jean said, sitting in her parents’ living room one evening last June, before coolly reminding her mother of her upcoming 18th birthday. “In a few months the power dynamic is going to be different.”
For Chris Ference, 19, who is also bipolar, the fast-approaching autonomy of his freshman year held somewhat less appeal. His parents had always directed every aspect of his mental health care. Last summer, over Friday night pizza at his home in Cranberry Township, Pa., he told them that assuming control felt more daunting than liberating.
“If it was up to me, I would just have it so you could make those decisions for me up until I was like, 22,” he said. “I mean, you’ve raised me well up to now. You know me better than anyone.”
This is an important topic, so I’m glad that Ms. Clemetson brought it to the fore. Follow this link (free subscription required) to read Ms. Clemetson’s story. Fortunately, there are resources on which college students with EBD can depend; learn more about some of them at these sites:
Technorati tags: mental health, bi-polar, depression
10 December 2006 Update: On Psych Central, John Grohol covered this story, too. Here’s a link to his entry.
Sphere: Related ContentFor those who argue that ADD-ADHD is a figment of the US (or at least “western”) culture, here’s a quick reminder about the presence of these problems in other cultures.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder among Nigerian primary school children Prevalence and co-morbid conditions.
Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2006 Nov 28;
Authors: Adewuya AO, Famuyiwa OO
OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to determine the prevalence of ADHD and co-morbid conditions in a sample of primary school children aged 7-12 years in Nigeria. METHOD: A two-staged procedure in which primary school pupils aged 6-12 years (n = 1112) were assessed for DSM-IV criteria of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) by their teachers in the first stage and their parents in the second stage. A flexible criterion was used for estimating the prevalence. RESULTS: The prevalence of ADHD was 8.7%. The prevalence of the subtypes were: predominantly Inattentive 4.9%, predominantly hyperactive/impulsive 1.2% and combined 2.6%. The male to female ratio was 2:1 for all the subtypes of ADHD except hyperactive/impulsive which was 3.2:1. The co-morbid conditions include oppositional defiant disorder (ODD – 25.8%), conduct disorder (CD – 9.3%) and anxiety/depression (20.6%). While ODD and CD were associated with the hyperactive/impulsive subtype, anxiety/depression was associated with inattentive subtype. CONCLUSION: Our findings support the notion that ADHD occurs across cultures. Given the prevalent rate, efforts should be made to map out strategies for early identification and referral of these children for proper evaluation and treatment. This study can serve as a platform for future analytical studies about this challenging research issue in sub-Saharan Africa.
Link to the PUBMED source.
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