Dear Readers,
Today, I fell to tears on my way home from work after a losing sleep battle at 5am, chronic pain, and the challenge of another trying day for my son. Today, Zachary was diagnosed with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
Today, I grieve for my son; for the way things will always be harder for him, for the way he can not yet apply insight toward his behavior, for the friends and caregivers who will misunderstand him and unwittingly make things worse, for the way he covers his ears when noises are too loud, for the way his IQ soars but his social life suffers, for the way I fiercely attempt to guard his self-esteem, for the way I fear I wont be vigilant enough, for those who will and do pressure us into difficult decisions, for the way he severely grapples to regulate his emotions, for the songs he sings that so many will mishear, for the constant redirection of a conformist society, for the way his intelligence will always lend itself to his awareness that he is different.
If you don’t believe in these diagnoses, do me a favor and keep your opinion to yourself. I can assure you our pain as a family is very real, but it is not unattended. Zachary has received hundreds of hours of counseling, various therapies, behavior intervention plans, the benefits of countless round table committee meetings by his cheerleaders, and accommodations as his progression and challenges fluctuate.
For now, I will have to rest in the years of education and instinct I have invested in. I will have to rest in the competence of the team, physicians, teachers and loving family that surround him. For now, I will have to rest in the knowledge that even when I am imperfect, I am enough.
Final Summation: The ability to comfort yourself is invaluable.
For more excellent insight and entertainment through a collaborative approach to all things mental health, including a guest post from yours truly, visit the Blunt Therapy Blog by Randy Withers, LPC! For additional perspectives on suicide prevention from master level mental health providers visit, 20 Professional Therapists Share Their Thoughts on Suicide!
In collaboration with Luis Posso, an Outreach Specialist from DrugRehab.com, Deskraven is now offering guides on depression and suicide prevention to its readers. For more information on understanding the perils of addiction visit, Substance Abuse and Suicide: A Guide to Understanding the Connection and Reducing Risk! In addition, for a comprehensive depression resource guide from their sister project at Columbus Recovery Center visit, Dealing with Depression!
Dear Readers,
We often believe there are certainties grounded in common sense just before we are made to feel remarkably impassioned by the lack of this truth. Neurodiversity is a biological concept so new and so controversial, the word barely exists in a modern dictionary. Put simply, it suggests that the contrasts found in neurodivergent brains, such as those that display indicators of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), developmental speech disorders, Dyslexia or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), are natural genetic variations in the human genome to be appreciated and therefore, not a disorder at all.
Instead, the concept of neurodiversity creates a shared space within neurological intellect that validates and embraces cognitive differences. It promotes alternative possibilities of definition by suggesting that some situations in biology may benefit from a mind with non-traditional wires. In my opinion, this topic has complex cultural implications worth exploring.
Among these is the suggestion that these differences can be painfully problematic in preventing social integration and therefore, we are obligated to intervene on the development of others. So then we must ask ourselves, to what extent is this type of imposition ethical?
As someone who used to practice Applied Behavioral Analysis as a registered Behavioral Therapist, I can recall moments of true internal conflict when it came to my core belief system, and the therapy I was implementing for my patients who would certainly fall into the neurodivergent category. How do you balance the promotion of healthy social or communicative function in the presence of clear disability, with the entitlement of each individual to advocate for their own needs? Is intervention warranted when self-harm or aggression is present? Are these maladaptive behaviors indicative of the internal processes behavioral science intentionally ignores due to the inability to concretely know or measure psychological events? For me, this philosophy clearly created more questions than answers despite intermittent moments of relief or success.
Alternately, detractors of neurodiversity are concerned that this term takes away from the increasingly apparent impairment associated with those of a low-functioning diagnosis. Likewise, they claim data does not support the neurodiverse of history. For example, are the occurrences of neurodivergent labels indeed increasing or is medical detection improving? Therein lies the problem of attempting to apply a fixed concept to a spectrum of variables.
A final concern includes the romanticizing of otherwise devastating illnesses that are responsible for vastly reducing one’s quality of life, as well as that of their caretakers. In his blog, 
Deskraven 