Resilience -attitudes and skills.- PROMOTING OPTIMISM IMPROVES MENTAL HEALTH AND BEHAVIOUR

Emotional Resilience

Resilience: Underlying Attitudes and Skills

Harry Mills, Ph.D. & Mark Dombeck, Ph.D. Updated: Jun 25th 2005

Early on in this document we said that the foundation of emotional resilience (and thus emotional intelligence) is largely a matter of attitude and belief. How people think about themselves and their relationships with others and the world forms the base on which emotion management skills sit. Negative, defeatist attitudes towards self and others make it more difficult for you to successfully manage your emotions. Positive, empowering attitudes, on the other hand, make emotional resilience seem like second nature.




Emotionally resilient people tend to display the following positive characteristics:


    Happiness
    Control
    Optimism
    Mindfulness and Flow
    Hardiness
    Communication
    Relationships
    Compassion and Empathy


In the next major section of this document, we'll explore each of these characteristics attributes (beliefs, attitudes) in greater detail. It is worth your while to learn about and practice these attitudes, for doing so will make it easier for you to become more resilient and self-aware and to be able to consciously manage your emotions as necessary to benefit your life. 

TEACHING OPTIMISTIC THINKING AND POSTIVE THINKING SKILLS CAN IMPROVE RESILIENCE AND GENERAL MENTAL HEALTH.

COGNITIVE BEHAVIOUR THERAPY CAN BE VERY EFFECTIVE FOR ADOLESCENT BEHAVIOURAL ISSUES-COURTESY OF 'MIND' WEBSITE

What is cognitive behaviour therapy?

Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) describes a number of therapies that all have a similar approach to solving problems - these can range from sleeping difficulties or relationship problems, to drug and alcohol abuse or anxiety and depression. CBT works by changing people's attitudes and their behaviour. The therapies focus on the thoughts, images, beliefs and attitudes that we hold (our cognitive processes) and how this relates to the way we behave, as a way of dealing with emotional problems.

An important advantage of CBT is that it tends to be short, taking three to six months for most emotional problems. Clients attend a session a week, each session lasting either 50 minutes or an hour. During this time, the client and therapist are working together to understand what the problems are and to develop a new strategy for tackling them. CBT introduces them to a set of principles that they can apply whenever they need to, and which will stand them in good stead throughout their lives.

CBT is a form of psychotherapy which combines cognitive and behavioural therapy. Cognitive therapy looks at how our thoughts can create our feelings and mood. Behavioural therapy pays close attention to the relationship between our problems, our behaviour and our thoughts. CBT may focus on what is going on in the present rather than the past, but often the therapy will also look at how thinking patterns may have begun in early childhood and the impact patterns of thinking may have on how we interpret the world as adults.
 
What's the history of CBT?

In the 1960s, a US psychiatrist and psychotherapist called Aaron T. Beck observed that, during his analytical sessions, his patients tended to have an 'internal dialogue' going on in their minds, almost as if they were talking to themselves. But they would only report a fraction of this kind of thinking to him.

For example, in a therapy session the client might be thinking to him- or herself: 'He (the therapist) hasn't said much today. I wonder if he's annoyed with me?' These thoughts might make the client feel slightly anxious or perhaps annoyed. He or she could then respond to this thought with a further thought: 'He's probably tired, or perhaps I haven't been talking about the most important things'. The second thought might change how the client was feeling.

Beck realised that the link between thoughts and feelings was very important. He invented the term 'automatic thoughts' to describe emotion-filled or 'hot' thoughts that might pop up in the mind. Beck found that people weren't always fully aware of such thoughts, but could learn to identify and report them. If a person was feeling upset in some way, the thoughts were usually negative and neither realistic nor helpful. Beck found that identifying these thoughts was the key to the client understanding and overcoming his or her difficulties.

Beck called it cognitive therapy because of the importance it places on thinking. It's now known as CBT because the therapy incorporated behavioural techniques as well. The balance between the cognitive and the behavioural elements varies among the different therapies of this type, but all come under the general term 'cognitive behaviour therapy'. CBT has since undergone scientific trials in many places by different teams, and has been applied to a wide variety of problems.
 
What's so important about negative thoughts?

CBT is based on a 'model' or theory that it's not events themselves that upset us, but the meanings we give them. Our thoughts can block us seeing things that don't fit with what we believe is true. In other words, we continue to hold on to the same old thoughts and fail to learn anything new.

For example, a depressed woman may think, 'I can't face going into work today: I can't do it. Nothing will go right. I'll feel awful.' As a result of having these thoughts - and of believing them - she may ring in sick. By behaving like this, she won't have the chance to find out that her prediction was wrong. She might have found some things she could do, and at least some things that were OK. But if she stays at home, brooding about her failure to go in, she may end up thinking: 'I've let everyone down. They will be angry with me. Why can't I do what everyone else does? I'm so weak and useless.' She will probably end up feeling worse, and have even more difficulty going in to work the next day. Thinking, behaving and feeling like this may start a downward spiral. This vicious circle can apply to many different kinds of problems.
 
How does this kind of problem start?

Beck suggested that these thinking patterns are set up in childhood, and become automatic and relatively fixed. So, a child who didn't get much open affection from their parents but was praised for school work, might come to think, 'I have to do well all the time. If I don't, people will reject me'. Such a rule for living (known as a 'dysfunctional assumption') may do well for the person a lot of the time and help them to work hard.

But if something happens that's beyond their control and they experience failure, then the dysfunctional thought pattern may be triggered. The person may then begin to have 'automatic' thoughts like, 'I've completely failed. No one will like me. I can't face them'.

CBT acts to help the person understand that this is what's going on. It helps him or her to step outside their automatic thoughts and test them out. CBT would encourage the depressed woman mentioned earlier to examine real-life experiences to see what happens to her, or to others, in similar situations. Then, in the light of a more realistic perspective, she may be able to take the chance of testing out what other people think, by revealing something of her difficulties to friends.

Clearly, negative things can and do happen. But when we are in a disturbed state of mind, we may be basing our predictions and interpretations on a biased view of the situation, making the difficulty that we face seem much worse. CBT helps people to correct these misinterpretations.
 
What form does treatment take?

CBT differs from other therapies because sessions have a structure, rather than the person talking freely about whatever comes to mind. At the beginning of the therapy, the client meets the therapist to describe specific problems and to set goals they want to work towards. The problems may be troublesome symptoms, such as sleeping badly, not being able to socialise with friends, or difficulty concentrating on reading or work. Or they could be life problems, such as being unhappy at work, having trouble dealing with an adolescent child, or being in an unhappy marriage.

These problems and goals then become the basis for planning the content of sessions and discussing how to deal with them. Typically, at the beginning of a session, the client and therapist will jointly decide on the main topics they want to work on that week. They will also allow time for discussing the conclusions from the previous session. And they will look at the progress made with the 'homework' the client set for him- or herself last time. At the end of the session, they will plan another assignment to do outside the sessions.
 
Doing homework

Working on homework assignments between sessions, in this way, is a vital part of the process. What this may involve will vary. For example, at the start of the therapy, the therapist might ask the client to keep a diary of any incidents that provoke feelings of anxiety or depression, so that they can examine thoughts surrounding the incident. Later on in the therapy, another assignment might consist of exercises to cope with problem situations of a particular kind.
 
The importance of structure

The reason for having this structure is that it helps to use the therapeutic time most efficiently. It also makes sure that important information isn't missed out (the results of the homework, for instance) and that both therapist and client think about new assignments that naturally follow on from the session.

The therapist takes an active part in structuring the sessions to begin with. As progress is made, and the client grasps the principles they find helpful, they take more and more responsibility for the content of sessions. So by the end, the client feels empowered to continue working  independently.
 
Group sessions

CBT is usually a one-to-one therapy. But it's also well suited to working in groups, or families, particularly at the beginning of therapy. Many people find great benefit from sharing their difficulties with others who may have similar problems, even though this may seem daunting at first. The group can also be a source of specially valuable support and advice, because it comes from people with personal experience of a problem. Also, by seeing several people at once, service-providers can offer help to more people at the same time, so people get help sooner.
 
How else does it differ from other therapies?

CBT also differs from other therapies in the nature of the relationship that the therapist will try to establish. Some therapies encourage the client to be dependent on the therapist, as part of the treatment process. The client can then easily come to see the therapist as all-knowing and all-powerful. The relationship is different with CBT.

CBT favours a more equal relationship that is, perhaps, more business-like, being problem-focused and practical. The therapist will frequently ask the client for feedback and for their views about what is going on in therapy. Beck coined the term 'collaborative empiricism', which emphasises the importance of client and therapist working together to test out how the ideas behind CBT might apply to the client's individual situation and problems.
 
What kind of people benefit?

People who describe having particular problems are often the most suitable for CBT, because it works through having a specific focus and goals. It may be less suitable for someone who feels vaguely unhappy or unfulfilled, but who doesn't have troubling symptoms or a particular aspect of their life they want to work on.

It's likely to be more helpful for anyone who can relate to CBT's ideas, its problem-solving approach and the need for practical self-assignments. People tend to prefer CBT if they want a more practical treatment, where gaining insight isn't the main aim.

CBT can be an effective therapy for a number of problems:

    anger management
    anxiety and panic attacks
    child and adolescent problems
    chronic fatigue syndrome
    chronic pain
    depression
    drug or alcohol problems
    eating problems
    general health problems
    habits, such as facial tics
    mood swings
    obsessive-compulsive disorder
    phobias
    post-traumatic stress disorder
    sexual and relationship problems
    sleep problems

CBT does not claim to be able to cure all of the above problems. For example, it does not claim to be able to cure chronic pain or disorders such as chronic fatigue syndrome. Rather, CBT might help people with, for example, arthritis or chronic fatigue syndrome, to find new ways of coping while living with the disorders.

There is a new and rapidly growing interest in using CBT (together with medication) with people who suffer from hallucinations and delusions, and those with long-term problems in relating to others.

It's less easy to solve problems that are more severely disabling and more long-standing through short-term therapy. But people can often learn principles that improve their quality of life and increase their chances of making further progress. There is also a wide variety of self-help literature. It provides information about treatments for particular problems and ideas about what people can do on their own or with friends and family.
 
Why do I need to do homework?

People who are willing to do assignments at home seem to get the most benefit from CBT. For example, many people with depression say they don't want to take on social or work activities until they are feeling better. CBT may introduce them to an alternative viewpoint - that trying some activity of this kind, however small-scale to begin with, will help them feel better.

If that individual is open to testing this out, they could agree to do a homework assignment (say to go to the cinema with a friend). They may make faster progress, as a result, than someone who feels unable to take this risk.
 
How effective is it?

CBT can substantially reduce the symptoms of many emotional disorders - clinical trials have shown this. For some people it can work just as well as drug therapies at treating depression and anxiety disorders. And the benefits may last longer. All too often, when drug treatments finish, people relapse, and so practitioners may advise patients to continue using medication for longer.

When patients are followed up for up to two years after therapy has ended, many studies have shown an advantage for CBT. This research suggests that CBT helps bring about a real change that goes beyond just feeling better while the patient stays in therapy. This has fuelled interest in CBT. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommends CBT via the NHS for common mental disorders, such as depression and anxiety. (See Useful websites.)

Comparisons with other types of short-term psychological therapy aren't clear-cut. Therapies such as inter-personal therapy and social skills training are also effective. The drive is now to make all these interventions as effective as possible, and also, perhaps, to establish who responds best to which type of therapy.
 
Limitations

CBT is not a miracle cure. The therapist needs to have considerable expertise - and the client must be prepared to be persistent, open and brave. Not everybody will benefit, at least not to full recovery, in a short space of time. It's unrealistic to expect too much.

At the moment, experts know quite a lot about people who have relatively clear-cut problems. They know much less about how the average person may do - somebody, perhaps, who has a number of problems that are less clearly defined. Sometimes, therapy may have to go on longer to do justice to the number of problems and to the length of time they've been around. One fact is also clear, though: CBT is rapidly developing. All the time, new ideas are being researched to deal with the more difficult aspects of people's problems; for example, post-traumatic stress.
 
How does CBT work?

CBT is quite complex. There are several possible theories about how it works, and clients often have their own views. Perhaps there is no one explanation. But CBT probably works in a number of ways at the same time. Some it shares with other therapies, some are specific to CBT. The following illustrate the ways in which CBT can work.
 
Learning coping skills

CBT tries to teach people skills for dealing with their problems. Someone with anxiety may learn that avoiding situations actually increases fears. Confronting fears in a gradual and manageable way helps give the person faith in their own ability to cope. Someone who is depressed may learn to record their thoughts and look at them more realistically. This helps them to break the downward spiral of their mood. Someone with long-standing problems in relating to other people may learn to check out their assumptions about other people's motivation, rather than always assuming the worst.
 
Changing behaviours and beliefs

A new strategy for coping can lead to more lasting changes to basic attitudes and ways of behaving. The anxious client may learn to avoid avoiding things! He or she may also find that anxiety is not as dangerous as they assumed.

Someone who's depressed may come to see themselves as an ordinary member of the human race, rather than inferior and fatally flawed. Even more basically, they may come to have a different attitude to their thoughts - that thoughts are just thoughts, and nothing more.
 
A new form of relationship

One-to-one CBT can bring the client into a kind of relationship they may not have had before. The 'collaborative' style means that they are actively involved in changing. The therapist seeks their views and reactions, which then shape the way the therapy progresses. The person may be able to reveal very personal matters, and to feel relieved, because no-one judges them. He or she arrives at decisions in an adult way, as issues are opened up and explained. Each individual is free to make his or her own way, without being directed. Some people will value this experience as the most important aspect of therapy.
 
Solving life problems

The methods of CBT may be useful because the client solves problems that may have been long-standing and stuck. Someone anxious may have been in a repetitive and boring job, lacking the confidence to change. A depressed person may have felt too inadequate to meet new people and improve their social life. Someone stuck in an unsatisfactory relationship may find new ways of resolving disputes. CBT may teach someone a new approach to dealing with problems that have their basis in an emotional disturbance.
 
How can I find a therapist?

It's possible to get CBT on the NHS in several places, and the NHS provision of CBT is developing fast under the government funded programme 'Improved Access to Psychological Therapies' (IAPT). However, in some areas the service is still patchy. In addition to the services offered via IAPT, some counsellors and psychologists offer CBT under the NHS, for example at GP surgeries. Some nurses, doctors, occupational therapists and clinical psychologists working in community mental health teams can also provide CBT. Some NHS Trusts will have specialist therapy services.

MEDITATION CAN EASE RELIANCE ON DRUG TREATMENTS FOR KIDS WITH 'ADHD LIKE BEHAVIOURS'-GREAT NEWS

Yogi-style meditation could ease ADHD stresses

News | Published in The TES on 12 August, 2011 | By: Jules Delay

  :
Transcendental meditation, as made famous in the late 1960s by the Beatles and their guru the Maharishi Yogi, could help alleviate the symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) new research has claimed.

A small-scale study funded by the David Lynch Foundation, which promotes TM, reported that the practice tackles children's stress levels and improves "cognitive functioning".

The research gave 18 American 11 to 14-year-old sufferers of ADHD a six-month course in TM, concluding that their focus on schoolwork, organisational skills and independent learning all improved. The study also claimed that TM had the added benefit of being an alternative to the use of drugs, which are often used to treat the condition.

Earlier this year, the independent Maharishi School in Lancashire gained approval from the Department for Education to become a free school.

Teachers and pupils at the school take part in three 10-minute meditation sessions every day, which headteacher Derek Cassells believes helps them reach an "inner peace" and improve the learning environment.

But Christopher Robertson, lecturer in inclusive and special education at Birmingham University, said he would urge "significant caution" over the findings that meditation can help ADHD.

"I think there are major problems when it comes to the scientific benefits of TM," he said. "One should be very cautious about claims made about interventions in ADHD.

"But what we do know is that children with ADHD characteristics do not respond well to traditional teaching approaches. The use of TM is potentially interesting because it is breaking up the pattern of orthodox teaching, but there might be other approaches that break that pattern that are beneficial as well."

50 YEARS ANNIVERSARY- MILGRAMS CLASSIC EXPERIMENT ON 'THE WHITE COAT EFFECT' OR THE 'DYNAMIC FOLLOWERSHIP' PRINCIPLE - RELEVANT TODAY TO CHILDREN WHOSE BEHAVIOURS ARE OVER-MEDICALISED

DO WE FOLLOW ORDERS AND INCREASE 'DOSE?'

 By Alex Haslam -Guardian 17-08-11

Fifty years ago, in August 1961, social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment that changed our understanding of the human propensity for evil for ever. Participants were invited into his laboratory at Yale, supposedly for a study looking at the effects of punishment on memory. Asked to assume the role of the "teacher", they were then told to administer an electric shock to a "learner" every time he made a mistake. The shocks started at 15 volts but increased in 15-volt increments every time an error was made, going right up to 450 volts – enough to kill someone twice over.

In fact, the learner was an actor, and the electric shocks weren't real. The question that Milgram was really interested in was how willing people were to follow instructions. Would they stop at 150 volts (where the learner demanded to be let out, because his heart was starting to bother him), or at 300 volts (where he let out an agonised scream and then stopped answering)? How far would you go?

Milgram's colleagues suggested people would only go up to about 100 volts – certainly not far enough to cause real harm. They also thought that only about 1% would go to 450 volts, assuming that only a sadist or a psychopath would go this far. However, as every student who has recently completed a psychology A-level knows, two-thirds of Milgram's participants continued administering shocks all the way up to 450 volts.

Milgram's experiment showed us that even normal, "decent" people can engage in acts of extreme cruelty when instructed to do so by others – an idea consistent with Hannah Arendt's notion of the "banality of evil", which had derived from her observations of the trial of Adolf Eichmann – which came to a conclusion in the same month as Milgram's experiment. Arendt presented Eichmann as a bland office worker: not a monster, but a normal person more concerned with bureaucratic duty than questioning the ends to which bureaucracy is working.

The empirical contribution of Milgram's experiment is as important today as it ever was, but how relevant are the conclusions that were drawn from it? Recently historians and psychologists have started to unpick the idea that evil is banal. Research indicates that decent people participate in horrific acts not because they become passive, mindless functionaries who do not know what they are doing, but rather because they come to believe – typically under the influence of those in authority – that what they are doing is right.

David Cesarani's 2004 biography of Eichmann, for example, shows him to be no back-room pen-pusher, but an enthusiastic Nazi keen to play his part in developing creative solutions to "the Jewish problem". Yaacov Lozowick's study of Hitler's bureaucrats, likewise reveals them to be much more than small cogs in a big machine of which they had no understanding. The true horror is not that they were blind to the evil they were perpetrating, but they knew full well what they were doing, and believed it to be right.

In these terms, Milgram's studies are still relevant, not because they provide a window on to the "banality of evil", but because they provide insights into the conditions under which evil can appear banal. In particular, the key question they throw up is why participants identify with the authority rather than with the victim, and hence are willing to follow him down the destructive path he sketches out.

This same question continues to be pertinent to atrocities and abusive acts we see around us in the world today: the abuse of detainees in Abu Ghraib, genocide in Darfur, or even phone hacking in News International. In all these cases, followers have proved willing to work towards leaders not because they were blindly obeying orders but because they were working creatively towards the goals of a leadership with which they identified.

In all these cases searching for orders fails to recognise the nature of the processes involved. They involve not just passive obedience but also dynamic followership.

So parents,in some cases, could be demonstrating 'dynamic followership' when thet willingly give their young child a potentially toxic dose of a psychostimulant or other drugs.Worse still when they 'self medicate' the child who is having 'a bad hair day.'

MIND FACTSHEET - THE DIAGNOSIS OF ADHD AND WHAT TREATMENTS ARE THERE?

How is a diagnosis made?(shows reliance on DSM and ICD subjective checklists)


There aren’t any special DNA tests, blood tests or other laboratory tests for ADHD. Only a child mental health expert (a child psychiatrist, an educational psychologist or a paediatrician) can make the diagnosis, based on the DSM-IV (the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), or the ICD-10 (its international counterpart). One aim is to rule out any other possible causes for your child’s behaviour, such as language or hearing difficulties, dyslexia, autism, Asperger’s syndrome, epilepsy, obsessive compulsive disorder or depression.

ADHD is the usual term (though it’s sometimes called Attention Deficit Disorder [ADD]), and describes the two different groups of symptoms: hyperactivity (behaviour problems) and attention deficit (learning problems). Most children have a mixture of both types of symptoms, but others have only one type or the other. The term is sometimes written AD/HD to reflect this (as in ‘and/or’). If your child isn’t particularly hyperactive, they may still be diagnosed as having ADHD, but it will be called 'ADHD without hyperactivity'. Girls often have this diagnosis, while boys tend to have both aspects of the problem.

Whoever does the diagnosis will observe your son or daughter carefully and may give them tests to do (for example, psychometric tests and Continuous Performance Tests), which help build a picture of their mental processes. They will also collect as much information as possible from parents, teachers, playgroup leaders, social workers, health visitors and anyone else involved in looking after your child. As a parent, you will probably be asked to complete a questionnaire about your child’s behaviour. Doctors or psychologists will take into account whether there are any other medical reasons for the behaviour, and what else might be going on in your child’s life.

Once they think they know what’s wrong, they will suggest the best available treatment for that particular child. Not all children will be offered the same treatment for ADHD.
 
What are the treatments?

Ideally, you should get a package of treatments involving behaviour management, counselling or psychotherapy, special help at school, and, possibly, medication. Unfortunately, access to all these forms of help may be limited by lack of funding. On top of any treatment your child is offered, it’s vital that you, as parents, get the help and support you need to learn the extra skills that can help your child. This will make you feel more confident about coping, and will help reduce stress and conflict within the family.
 
Behaviour management

Children want to get their parents’ attention; it’s a powerful reward for them. Unfortunately, scolding, arguing or shouting are powerful forms of parental attention, even though they are negative. Because children with ADHD are very difficult to manage, they tend to get more negative attention, and so will continue to behave badly. This cycle, which is called negative behaviour reinforcement, needs to be broken.

To do this, behaviour management encourages parents to notice when a child is being good, and to reward them. Children benefit from being praised often, enthusiastically and clearly. They need to know why they are being praised. This is knownas positive behaviour reinforcement.

Parents may need to learn how best to handle bad behaviour – ignoring a child is not always the right thing to do, but for some behaviour it may be best. The vital thing for parents is to have a good behaviour strategy to start with, so that they know which forms of behaviour can be ignored and which are unacceptable and need to be tackled first.

It is important to maintain boundaries and discuss why some behaviour is unacceptable, as a child may not immediately understand why something is wrong. Then keep to the rules, so that your child doesn’t get confused. It is also very important to let them know when they are getting it right. You should try to avoid using 'stop' instructions, such as, 'stop shouting', and say something like, 'please speak more quietly', instead. You should also try taking time out if your child keeps refusing your request, which gives you all a chance to calm down.

Behaviour management techniques take time and great patience on everybody's part. Parents often find they have just as much to learn as their children, and need plenty of support. Behaviour techniques have been shown to be very effective, and a positive reinforcement cycle can soon gain momentum, once it’s established.

It’s just as vital to help your child gain more self-control, both at home and at school. Putting more structure into their daily life, to help them get better organised, is an important first step. It’s a great help to children to use things like alarm clocks to break homework into chunks, and lists of tasks they can tick off each day. Getting a good routine going is essential. At school, it’s important that they’re encouraged to take an active part in learning, helped to set their own pace, and provided with lessons that have the right content level, variety and interest. Educational psychologists are often the best people to advise parents and teachers on effective programmes for their children.
 
Social skills training

Social skills training teaches children how to manage their relationships better, by reading the hidden signals of communication. It teaches them to understand what impact their behaviour has on other people, so they can change it.
 
Counselling

Counsellors are trained to help children to talk through the reasons for their behaviour and its consequences. Children diagnosed with ADHD almost always feel bad about themselves. Counselling can help them to tackle this, gain more self-control, focus their attention, and find better ways of learning and organising themselves.

As a parent, you also need to look honestly at the way your family works as a whole. You may well find family therapy can give you all a chance to talk through the worries or problems that may be contributing to your child's behaviour. It’s also a good chance to discuss how your child’s behaviour is affecting the rest of the family. GPs, family therapy centres or child and family consultation services can all be useful starting points for helping parents, as well as children.
 
Psychotherapy

Child psychotherapists are skilled at helping children to recognise and tackle their own distress. Some ADHD-diagnosed children can become very severely demoralised, anxious or depressed. A child psychotherapist can provide intensive and longer-term help for them. Note that overactive and disruptive behaviour can in itself be a sign of unhappiness in a child, rather than being a sign of ADHD.
 
Education

Schools may play a crucial part in the management of your child’s ADHD. Additional in-class support may be available through the school’s special needs department. Behavioural techniques may be used but most importantly, the school will hopefully develop strategies to improve your child’s academic achievement, which will have beneficial effects on their self-esteem and consequently, their behaviour and engagement in lessons.
 
Medication

There is some controversy about using drugs to treat ADHD. Some experts have said that it gives both the children and their families a breathing space from the troubled behaviour, and helps them to maintain a more loving relationship with their child. Others believe that children are being prescribed these drugs unnecessarily and fear that using them may mask emotional or other causes behind the behaviour, especially in very young children. The long-term effects on the child’s brain, which is still developing, are not known.

Stimulants
 
Although stimulant drugs have been used to treat ADHD since 1937, one of the most popular drugs, Ritalin, was virtually unknown in Britain at the beginning of the 1990s, but between 2001-2002, prescription rates rose by 22 per cent. Over a five-year period, the number of prescriptions for children rocketed by 102 per cent to 254,000 items. Prescriptions for child and adolescent ADHD continue to rise. There have been cases of these drugs being misused, with youngsters selling them to other people. The drugs used are methylphenidate (Ritalin, Concerta and Equasym) and dexamfetamine (Dexedrine), which are stimulants that act on the central nervous system. They are Schedule II controlled drugs, falling into the same category as barbiturates and methadone, and are related to amphetamines ('speed'). It’s not known exactly how they work, but it’s possible that they increase the activity of the chemicals in the brain that are essential to communication between brain cells.

These drugs can sometimes have unwelcome side effects, particularly at the beginning of treatment. Children may have less appetite, lose weight and have problems falling asleep. These drugs may retard growth (which should be monitored). The medicine usually lasts for about three to five hours at a time, and when it wears off, there can be a rebound effect, with the problem behaviour returning in an extreme form. In about ten per cent of children, the drug can make them tearful and withdrawn. Reducing the dose often helps. Doctors need to carefully calculate the right dose of the drug, and monitor the effect on each child. If one kind doesn’t work, they may suggest a different one. Some children take these stimulants for six months, others for much longer, depending on how helpful they prove.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence states that these stimulants shouldn’t be used as the first or only treatment, and most doctors agree that they should only be used when absolutely necessary. The British National Formulary advises that the use of amphetamines should be discouraged as they may cause dependence and psychotic states. The drug safety and risk committee of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in America recommended in February 2006 that ADHD stimulant treatments should carry a black box warning of the risk of sudden death, following a report listing 25 sudden deaths in both adults and children, between 1999 and 2003. Some of these were patients with known heart disease, and the cautions for these drugs do include heart conditions.

Non-stimulants
 
The alternative to amphetamines is atomoxetine (Strattera) which is not a stimulant, but acts in a similar way to antidepressants and is much less likely to be abused as a street drug. Its effects last longer than those of the stimulants, so that it may need to be taken only once a day. Possible side effects include liver problems which are rare but serious, as well as loss of appetite and digestive problems and raised blood pressure. (For more information see Mind’s web-based factsheet, Drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) Methylphenidate and atomoxetine are not licensed for use in children under the age of six years; dexamfetamine is not licensed for children under the age of three years. Drug treatment should always be initiated by a specialist with expertise in ADHD.

Antidepressants
 
When these drugs aren’t suitable, don’t work or have unpleasant side effects, doctors may prescribe antidepressants. Sometimes, these may be useful when a doctor feels a child's depression is more disabling than their ADHD-diagnosed problems, but they may also have side effects. There are, however, very few types of antidepressant that a doctor might prescribe to a child. The BNF for Children says that the tricyclic antidepressant imipramine may be prescribed for a child with ADHD, but this drug should not be given at the same time as a stimulant. For more detailed information see Mind’s booklet Making sense of antidepressants.

The medication can’t cure the problem, but it can help the child to think more clearly, understand better and feel calmer and more in control of themselves. This means they can take proper advantage of the other help they are getting at home and at school. Drug holidays are often built into the treatment plan so that the doctor has a chance to judge the continuing benefits of the medicine, and to allow growth to catch up if it is thought to have been retarded by the drug

THERE ARE MANY MORE ALTERNATIVE TREATMENTS: SEE MY BLOG ON:

Google put : 'cope-yp@blogspot.com'

POWERFUL QUOTES ABOUT BRINGING UP CHILDREN

"Our children are our messengers to a future we will not inhabit."

Cannon Billings(Thought for the Day-Radio 4)

"What message do we want to send to the future about the way we have chosen to treat our children today?"

Dave Traxson

"You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams."

Kahlil Gibran

"Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each."



Plato

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as if they are a nail."

Abraham H. Maslowe




"The pressures of being a parent are equal to any pressure on earth. To be a conscious parent, and really look to that little being's mental and physical health, is a responsibility which most of us, including me, avoid most of the time because it's too hard."

John Lennon

"Your children need your presence more than your presents."

Jesse Jackson

"Train the parent and spare the child."

Duane Alan Hahn

"Children need models rather than critics."

Joseph Joubert

"Children are apt to live up to what you believe of them."

Lady Bird Johnson

"A torn jacket is soon mended, but hard words bruise the heart of a child."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself."

Josh Billings


"Parents are not quite interested in justice, they are interested in quiet."

Bill Cosby

"Having children makes one no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist."

Michael Levine



No further evidence is needed to show that 'mental illness' is not the name of a biological condition whose nature awaits to be elucidated, but is the name of a concept whose purpose is to obscure the obvious.
 
Thomas Szasz

A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.
 
Thomas Szasz

A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.
 
Thomas Szasz

DAVE TRAXSON -His view on the current contraversial epidemic of drugging school aged children with psychoactive drugs (Based on a famous Ghandi quote about state violence)- August 2011

Why I am against the unnecessary drugging  of so many of our school aged children for unproven and subjectively defined behavioural \ mental illness conditions,which may fall in the normal range, using unscientifically designed checklists:

The GOOD it does is only TEMPORARY

The HARM it does could be PERMANENT

-physically and psychologically

(Derived from Ghandi’s quote of what he thought of the effects of state violence which, some would say, might include the systemic and widening of prescribing psychotropic drugs for children.)

- I posit that drugging children could be a form of abuse of power by some medics and even some parents on the most vulnerable sector within society, our children. It may be a form of state condoned abuse, through either commission or omission.