A return to discipline - could it really be? (part 1)

Very rarely does the mainstream media surprise me with anything it reports about medicine. Even less often do they surprise me with their reporting on now-common childhood mental health problems - things like the largely made-up "disease" of ADHD, depression, and mood disorders…

Usually, it's all the same excuse-ridden claptrap:

Parents have it tougher these days since more of them are divorced or single (subtext: all men are diaper-phobic cads), children require more guidance because they're growing up faster in a harsher world, and the government and schools aren't doing enough to help.

Basically, it's the same old boo-hoo pity party for an increasing number of crappy, selfish parents who shirk their child-rearing duties. Far from surprising…

But color me surprised today. More like flabbergasted!

None other than the New York Times has recently run a beefy article that - although stopping short of pointing a finger of responsibility solely at parents - definitely goes a long way toward suggesting that proper parenting can "treat" commonly diagnosed mental issues among kids, specifically ADHD, depression, and mood disorders…

To see such an expose` in the marquis outlet of the drug-biased media is an incredible and stunning development. And apparently, the article is simply mirroring a new trend in the mental health field toward expanding treatment options beyond the medical establishment's narrow, drug-centric views.

According to the Times piece, the American Psychological Association recommended in August of last year that drug-free therapies (like behavioral modification and higher intensity parenting) be "considered first" in "most cases" of childhood mental disorders. This is HUGE.

But that's not even the best of it: The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (the folks that have backed cramming drugs down kids' throats for years) has also recently come out with the recommendation that depressed kids receive some type of "talk therapy" before being given antidepressants. Simply incredible.

The Times article - which I must say really is very complete, credible, and well-balanced - offers some pretty encouraging numbers to back up the notion that parenting can be an effective "drug" for most childhood/adolescent behavior issues. Here are a few of the more encouraging ones, from a University of Buffalo study of 128 families:

• 33% of parents who completed a behavioral modification parenting program reported seeing such a drastic improvement in their kids' behavior that they determined medication to be completely unnecessary
  
• Fully two-thirds of those families studied were able to reduce their child's doses of drugs (mostly for ADHD and depression, I assume) to a fraction of what is typically prescribed
  
• 80% of participating families were able to eliminate using doses of prescription drugs altogether while their children were at home (some continued to require drugs at school - which should tell you something about the average school environment)

All in all, this New York Times story - and this slight shift of the professional "pendulum" back toward the traditional model of more disciplined, less medicated child-rearing - is encouraging. To me, at least.

There's still a long way to go, however. And there are things YOU can do to help. More in the next Daily Dose…

Advocating dedication - not medication,

William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.