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General Parenting
Do you consider your child to be mentally ill?
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<blockquote data-quote="Christy" data-source="post: 296986" data-attributes="member: 225"><p>Thanks everyone for weighing in. The stigma and the varied perceptions is one one of the reasons the NAMI Basics class is so helpful to struggling parents. It stresses that while many disorders have a genetic component, mental illness is no ones fault, medication is available but as a parent, you have the right to decided what is best, it goes over types of therapy, provides a great description of various disorders, and before I start to sound like an advertisement, I'll stop!</p><p></p><p>I wish the class was available and I had taken it 5 years ago. I really could have used the info as I began this journey. When I was asked to help get the word out about this class to others in our area that might benefit from the class, I realized that I didn't know that difficult child was mentally ill when he was younger and therefore did not know where to look for services. That got me thinking about how people might react to the term.</p><p></p><p>Just a thought and no judgments attached, many young children are diagnosed (many misdiagnosed) with ADHD. ADHD is a brain disorder and therefore a mental illness. All mental illnesses do not have the same level of severity. Understanding this would go a long way towards eliminating the stigma attached to the term mentally ill. Mental Illness is a medical disorder the same way asthma is, it just affects a different part of the body. </p><p></p><p>My son is also diagnosis'd with Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD)-not otherwise specified, a form of autism, and in looking for information and services available I realized that our county services are provided by the ARC (Association of Retarded Citizens). Autism is a developmental disability which in the past was called retardation. How many parents who have the autism ribbons on the their cars or dress their children in autism tee shirts so that others at the park will understand their behaviors would be doing the same thing if the term was retarded rather than autistic. It wouldn't change any of the wonderful things or the special needs of their child but it would change the public opinion. It is great that so many have come forward to educate society about autism, I wish the same were true of mental illness.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Christy, post: 296986, member: 225"] Thanks everyone for weighing in. The stigma and the varied perceptions is one one of the reasons the NAMI Basics class is so helpful to struggling parents. It stresses that while many disorders have a genetic component, mental illness is no ones fault, medication is available but as a parent, you have the right to decided what is best, it goes over types of therapy, provides a great description of various disorders, and before I start to sound like an advertisement, I'll stop! I wish the class was available and I had taken it 5 years ago. I really could have used the info as I began this journey. When I was asked to help get the word out about this class to others in our area that might benefit from the class, I realized that I didn't know that difficult child was mentally ill when he was younger and therefore did not know where to look for services. That got me thinking about how people might react to the term. Just a thought and no judgments attached, many young children are diagnosed (many misdiagnosed) with ADHD. ADHD is a brain disorder and therefore a mental illness. All mental illnesses do not have the same level of severity. Understanding this would go a long way towards eliminating the stigma attached to the term mentally ill. Mental Illness is a medical disorder the same way asthma is, it just affects a different part of the body. My son is also diagnosis'd with Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD)-not otherwise specified, a form of autism, and in looking for information and services available I realized that our county services are provided by the ARC (Association of Retarded Citizens). Autism is a developmental disability which in the past was called retardation. How many parents who have the autism ribbons on the their cars or dress their children in autism tee shirts so that others at the park will understand their behaviors would be doing the same thing if the term was retarded rather than autistic. It wouldn't change any of the wonderful things or the special needs of their child but it would change the public opinion. It is great that so many have come forward to educate society about autism, I wish the same were true of mental illness. [/QUOTE]
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