Then and Now

Mrs. Grama, whose sensible view I've quoted before here, wrote another sensible piece in Inyan magazine that began with her relating three incidents.

In the first incident, a father takes his three year old to the Steipler Gaon and says, "He still doesn't talk."

The Steipler asked him, "Can he say at least one word?"

The father said yes, he says Abba.

The Steipler said, then don't worry, with Hashem's help he will talk.

In the second incident, a young father asked Rabbi Nissim Karelitz what to do about his four and six year olds who constantly fought.

R' Karelitz said, Tell them stories [that emphasize good middos]."

Third incident - an 11 year old boy's principal asked the mother to come down to the school where he told her that her son was brazenly breaking the rules and was having trouble concentrating in class.

The mother consulted with an experienced and successful mother of a large family who knew her and her son well and was told she must do a better job protecting her son from being bullied by his older brother, a child needs to feel safe in his own home, and told her how.

Mrs. Grama says the three stories ended well. She points out that nowadays, with these situations, most people would have consulted with a speech pathologist, a behavioral psychologist and a psychiatrist who would likely have:

asked the parents why they hadn't started intervention earlier and advised immediate speech therapy

discussed sibling rivalry and appropriate parental intervention followed by behavioral therapy

prescribed medication to calm the child followed by therapy.

She asks, are we made differently nowadays? Or is it our way of thinking that has become corrupted?

The Wrong Address

I have been reading a diary that is printed weekly in Ami Living. A mother tells about her wonderful son who did beautifully in school through high school. Then he inexplicably began acting strangely. She says it is ten years now that she has been experiencing horrible situations with her son, his drug use, stealing, suicide attempts, outbursts, lack of religiosity.  For a while it was a mystery, until her son confided in her husband that he had watched inappropriate things (no further details about this). This is a letter that I wrote to the magazine which they have not published:

I have been following the tragic story of a woman's son's deterioration over the past many installments of Up the Down Escalator and I am perplexed.  What set the young man off was seeing inappropriate things. This led to consultations with psychologists, a social worker, and even medication and hospitalization.

But seeing inappropriate things is a spiritual problem! Out in the 'velt," seeing such things is not viewed as a problem! It would seem that the right person to consult about this would have been a rabbinic guide who could have provided a Torah perspective, direction in teshuva, and guidance in how to get back on track, spiritually.  

Wishing all of us yeshuos,

To me, it sounds like asking for a loaf of bread in a hardware store, shoes in a grocery story.  They may as well consult with a podiatrist; why a psychologist? These professionals were of no use and worse, the young man deteriorated under their care. It is painful to read how misdirected he was. They focused exclusively on his depression and other psychological symptoms and not on what got him in the mess in the first place.

Pills are Easier

A letter writer once irately wrote to a frum magazine, saying that of course, no parents want their children on ADD/ADHD medication unless it's absolutely warranted and all other options are explored.  She was quite adamant about that, though one could wonder how she knows that and whether she might just have projected her feelings onto others.

Mrs. B Grama writes a column for Hamodia's Inyan magazine.  She repudiated this view.  She writes:

"It has become quite common nowadays for us to open our weekly community magazines and find as many as a dozen ads for different therapy centers for children and adults, each one with a full staff of therapists ... Should we ooh and aah about it, or should we wonder why we are raising (or have ourselves become) a helpless, crippled generation that cannot seem to 'swim' on our own? Never before has there been such vast numbers of children who need outside help just to grow up (and vast numbers of parents who need assistance to raise them)."

She goes on to describe a woman who was diagnosed as suffering from "social anxiety" and thinks the woman is simply shy by nature.  Then she wrote about a man who was diagnosed with depression following his father's illness and watching his father suffer and fade away.  She wonders, isn't it normal to feel dejected under those circumstances? He needed support and encouragement from family and friends, not a medical diagnosis.

Worst example of all is about "Shaya's" mother who had a baby and whose father got a promotion so he came home later at night.  Shaya greatly missed all the times he used to speak to his parents after school every day.  "He became restless and unfocused in class and his behavior became problematic.  A psychologist was consulted and Shaya was put on medication to help improve his concentration and behavior."

When Mrs. Grama was consulted she asked the mother, "Wouldn't it be much simpler if you'd just make talking to and spending time with Shaya for about a half an hour at night your first priority?" To her shock, the mother said, "I know, but it's too hard; pills are easier."

So much for parents medicating their kids only as a last resort.

Confessions by Those in the Field of Mental Health

Psychotherapist, Shimon Russell, in an interview with Ami magazine said, "My first ten years out of college, I tried to do everything they taught me.  The next ten years, I tried to forget everything I'd been taught, to see if I could figure out what actually works.  My third decade of practice has been completely devoted to integrating all of it, both psychologically and spiritually."

In a Hamodia article, Rabbi Dr Abraham Twersky says, "When I was in my second year of medical school, my professor asked me what I was going for.  I told him psychiatry and he said, 'That's good.  Go to all the lectures, listen to what they say, ace your board exams, and then forget it all and use your head."

Is there any other field of medicine (or any other field) in which a student would find it beneficial to forget what was taught and figure things out for themselves? What does this tell us about the field of mental health, treatment and therapy?

I wonder why they think it's a good idea to share how useless their education was, other than providing them with official credentials which is not of any help to their clients. 

Fake Medicine

Some tidbits from an article in The Atlantic called "The Real Problems With Psychiatry":

* Every doctor who knows anything, knows that there is no biochemical imbalance that causes depression.

* Our gut reaction is always "that was really sick. Those guys in Boston -- they were really sick." But how do we know? Unless you decide in advance that anybody who does anything heinous is sick. This society is very wary of using the term "evil."

* A depression diagnosis gives people an identity formed around having a disease that we know doesn't exist, and how that can divert resources from where they might be needed. Imagine how much less depression there would be if people weren't worried about tuition, health care, and retirement.

* The DSM is created by a group of committees. It's a bureaucratic process. In place of scientific findings, the DSM uses expert consensus to determine what mental disorders exist and how you can recognize them.

* You can't just ask for special services for a student who is awkward. You have to get special services for a student with autism. In court, mental illnesses come from the DSM. If you want insurance to pay for your therapy, you have to be diagnosed with a mental illness.

the article

Shulchan Aruch versus Psychology

 

Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg from Minnesota, a longtime teacher and principal was speaking to parents and someone asked "How can we get our children to behave?"

His response: "When you walk into the room, do your children stand up for you?

The parent said no.

R' Ginsberg concluded, "So, what do you want?!"

Can you imagine a child psychologist saying that?