The conviction that
ADHD and other neurological
disorders have devastating effects on patients and families has been
acquired
by this writer through personal experience. I have struggled along with
my two
sons as they have grown from childhood into young adulthood with these
problems. I have experienced the frustration associated with receiving
inadequate attention and misdiagnosis from our healthcare community. It
is very
difficult to watch helplessly as young lives are wasted in a struggle
with an
elusive enemy. My oldest son was diagnosed with ADD at age seven. After
receiving numerous forms of ineffective intervention and experiencing
side
effects with drug therapy, he chose to go through life with no
therapeutic
interventions. I watched as he battled in his struggle against
inferiority. He
fought to establish himself as a person of value in a society that does
not
easily understand an impairment of a person's perceptional abilities.
The
younger of these two experienced a struggle that more closely resembled
a war.
At one point in his development he floundered in his attempt to perform
even
the most mundane tasks of daily life. The heartbreak is made worse when
you
realize that this same person was an accelerated student in elementary
and
middle school. He had been tested to have an IQ of over 150 and yet at
high
school age he failed in every endeavor. His behavior degraded through
stages of
disruptiveness at home and at school, inability to attend, mania,
depression,
drug abuse, habitual lying, violence with peers resulting in arrest and
ultimately hospitalization for bouts with psychotic episodes. These two
are
well on their way in the world now, but not without the scars of a
difficult
childhood.
It is my
hope that through this review and ongoing studies in this area
additional light
will be shed regarding appropriate approaches to treat and even cure
ADHD and
other neurological disorders.
All contents Copyright © 1995 - 2003 Schulenburg & Associates,
Inc.