On 2004-11-16 20:56:00, Anonymous wrote:
"Timoclea - I have ADD. I was given a stimulant many years ago and I was buzzed! This is what is being prescribed by the so-called degreed experts as the answer? How about learning self-control, anger management, making lists, focus skills (wWhich by the way WWASPS schools ALL teach) First hand experience, it works, though it took time to make it a conscious part of my life. ADD does not disappear, even masked by meds. From the article, it sounds like the young man did learn some good things. The program teaches to take what fits and let the rest go. Choosing to let go of the need for a consequence for a known rule was their choice. It's not my business, only theirs. "
Okay, so I'll take your word for it that you have ADD---although if you do, a stimulant shouldn't have "buzzed" you, it should have settled you. That sounds like a reason to reevaluate the diagnosis, but presumably that's already been done by qualified professionals.
But you obviously don't know jack shit about bipolar disorder.
Bipolars *really, really need* to be on appropriate medication.
Bipolar disorder is a physiological brain disease where each manic episode does a little bit more brain damage. If left untreated, parts of a bipolar person's brain actually shrink from the ongoing damage.
If treated with the right medicines at the right doses to prevent the manic episodes, the damage stops and at least some of it appears to heal.
The medications prescribed for bipolar disorder do *not* merely mask symptoms. They prevent further brain damage, and allow some of the damage that has already been done to heal.
Every growing human being needs to learn life skills, but most of us learn them just fine without being locked up in a facility to do so.
There is *no* reason to believe that as long as this kid takes his medication and sees his pdoc to adjust the doses when and as needed (things like sunlight levels and weight changes can change the needed dosage)---there's no reason to believe he can't learn life skills either from life and his parents like the rest of us do, or on an outpatient basis from a good therapist.
*I* learned self-control, anger management, how to make lists, how to "focus"---just from living my life and being raised by my parents.
*Most* people learn those things just fine that way.
Once this boy doesn't have essential cells in his brain dying and parts of his brain shrinking because he has a genetic disorder going untreated, *he* can learn those things just fine the normal way, too.
His problems are because he has a brain disease and wasn't taking the right drugs to arrest the damage and allow some of it to heal.
Stop the brain damage, and as long as you make sure it *stays* stopped, he can learn the same way any other *normal* teen learns----or at worst with some outpatient therapy to supplement normal life experience and parental advice.
Look, I don't know the physiology and causes of ADD---but I know the physiology and causes of bipolar disorder (which is what this boy has been diagnosed with, by qualified professionals) very well.
What "fits" for a bipolar is regularly taking the right meds to stop the brain damage. If a patient is displaying the symptoms of mania, that's our clue that right then that patient is undergoing further damage to his brain. And then they medicate the depressive side of it because patients do so much better at coping and actually taking their meds when they're *stable*. (It's not uncommon for the treatment to combine a mood stabilizer to take out the mania, and an antidepressant to raise the general mood to normal.)
For ADD, maybe the meds do only mask symptoms. I'm not an expert on that disorder.
For bipolar disorder, the meds actually treat the underlying problem---but the doctors do not yet have a way to treat the cause of the disorder, which is some set of genes "triggered" (and then the problem is there for life) by some thing or things they haven't yet pinpointed.
When they find the genes that make the vulnerability, they'll probably be able to develop a cure, but that's years if not decades away.
Anyway, the parents were exactly right to remove their kid. As long as they keep him stable on medication he should do as well as he personally can.
Taking the medication to stop the brain damage is what "fits". The whole kit and caboodle of locking the kid up under a regime of mind-bogglingly excessive and unnecessary rules is absolutely part of the "rest" that they needed to let go. And they apparently did.
Timoclea
