Back to Normal: Why Ordinary Childhood Behavior Is Mistaken for ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, and Autism Spectrum Disorder
Enrico Gnaulati, PhD
A veteran clinical psychologist exposes why doctors, teachers, & parents incorrectly diagnose healthy American children with serious psychiatric conditions.There has been an alarming rise in the number of American children & youth assigned a mental health diagnosis. Current data from the CDC reveal a 41 percent increase in rates of ADHD diagnoses over the past decade) & a 40-fold spike in bipolar disorder diagnoses. Similarly, diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder, once considered, has increased by 78 percent since 2002.
Dr. Enrico Gnaulati, a clinical psychologist specializing in childhood & adolescent therapy and assessment, has witnessed firsthand the push to diagnose these disorders in youngsters. Drawing both on his own clinical experience & on cutting-edge research, with Back to Normal he has written the definitive account of why our kids are being dramatically overdiagnosed & how parents & professionals can distinguish between true psychiatric disorders & normal childhood reactions to stressful life situations.
Gnaulati begins with the complex web of factors that have led to our current crisis. These include questionable education and training practices that cloud mental health professionals’ ability to distinguish normal from abnormal behavior in children, monetary incentives favoring prescriptions, check-list diagnosing, & high-stakes testing in schools. We’ve also developed an increasingly casual attitude about labeling kids & putting them on psychiatric drugs.
So how do we differentiate between a child with, say, Asperger’s syndrome & a child who is simply introverted, brainy, & single-minded? As Gnaulati notes, many of the symptoms associated with these disorders are similar to everyday childhood behaviors. In the 2nd half of the book Gnaulati tells detailed stories of wrongly diagnosed kids, providing parents & others with information about the developmental, temperam
…
Dr. Enrico Gnaulati, a clinical psychologist specializing in childhood & adolescent therapy and assessment, has witnessed firsthand the push to diagnose these disorders in youngsters. Drawing both on his own clinical experience & on cutting-edge research, with Back to Normal he has written the definitive account of why our kids are being dramatically overdiagnosed & how parents & professionals can distinguish between true psychiatric disorders & normal childhood reactions to stressful life situations.
Gnaulati begins with the complex web of factors that have led to our current crisis. These include questionable education and training practices that cloud mental health professionals’ ability to distinguish normal from abnormal behavior in children, monetary incentives favoring prescriptions, check-list diagnosing, & high-stakes testing in schools. We’ve also developed an increasingly casual attitude about labeling kids & putting them on psychiatric drugs.
So how do we differentiate between a child with, say, Asperger’s syndrome & a child who is simply introverted, brainy, & single-minded? As Gnaulati notes, many of the symptoms associated with these disorders are similar to everyday childhood behaviors. In the 2nd half of the book Gnaulati tells detailed stories of wrongly diagnosed kids, providing parents & others with information about the developmental, temperam
…
Categories:
Year:
2013
Publisher:
Beacon Press
Language:
english
Pages:
256
ISBN 10:
0807073350
ISBN 13:
9780807073353
File:
EPUB, 454 KB
IPFS:
,
english, 2013
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