We've Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication

After I finished "We've Got Issues," I bought four copies to give to friends. We need a way to move discussions about childrens' mental health forward, and this book -- because it is so well written -- helps us do that. I agree with another reviewer that the material in the book is not revolutionary. Warner writes: "Most of those who need mental health services don't get any care at all. Too much power and influence has been given to drug makers, rendering the science the public relies upon for information highly unreliable. Too much stigma remains. We tend to believe that, today, we have moved beyond the age-old prejudices against people with mental illness. But, in fact, that prejudice is alive and well in our time and has a new and socially acceptable face: it expresses itself in the eye-rolling laments about "pushy parents" and "drugged-up kids." In 2005, Peter Kramer made the exact same points in his book "Against Depression." But Warner, who writes principally for intelligent moms (she's the author of a great book about motherhood, and is also a former NY Times columnist), takes the message closer to home. The first part of the book -- where she tells about how the book came to be written -- is especially persuasive. Parents would be wise to pick up a copy of Judith Warner's book, read through the research she presents, and begin to face their fears about mental health issues in their own families and schools. It would do a world of good.

I've been a child clinical psychologist for 28 years and have seen pretty much all the changes in our cultural and medical views of childhood mental disorders as outlined in this book. Finally, someone sees the need to steer clear of all the hysteria and rhetoric and do something which child health professionals have been doing forever--actually getting to know these children and--gasp!--TALKING to their parents instead of condemning them. I'll say flatly that this book is nothing short of heroic. It demands to be read by anyone who is interested in a clearheaded, well-researched, and beautifully written work, stripped of all the ill-informed, judgmental and paranoid nonsense which abounds.

First, I would endorse the positive observations in the first two reviews. The book's account of the journey from one point of view to another makes it highly accessible. Warner recognizes that the same behavior in different degrees and people can reflect Disorder, Trait, or Gift. Variant attention can be Attention Deficit Disorder, Attention Direction Diversity, or A Different Drummer; thinking outside the box can be a gift, unless one is in an ensemble helplessly running counter to the beat agreed on. Warner's book is nicely complemented by Gary Greenberg's "Manufacturing Depression."

First, a BIG GIANT THANK YOU to Judith Warner! As a parent of a child "with issues" this book is documenting not just our journey, but the very similar journeys of many other parents. It is a great relief to read that our experiences were not unique. It deeply sad that we were out there on our own, while others were experiencing these things as well. If you as a parent are just starting this long and difficult journey this book is a must read! Also a great book to put into the hands of those within your circle of friends and family who stand in judgment of you!!!!

Judith Warner initially planned to write a book on how American children were falsely diagnosed and over-medicated by thoughtlessly competitive parents seeking a quick fix for their perfectly healthy (albeit quirky) children, for reasons ranging from enhancing their competitive edge (e.g. to raise their "B" grades to "A" grades) to "calming them down" to make parenting easier. She admits she once strongly believed, as many do, that hordes of children were medicated for "flavor of the week" disorders by lazy parents and unscrupulous doctors, and at the recommendation of teachers who needed their young charges to sit still for hours on end at school. What she discovered, however, after seeking such people...is that she couldn't find them. What she discovered instead were parents of sometimes desperately ill children who finally turned to medication (sometimes after years of "denial" about their child's illness) in desperation, more often than not as a last resort, and with great guilt, after trying every other nutritional or behavioral therapy they could identify. To all those adults who ask "where were all these children before when we were growing up?," Ms. Warner notes that they were always there. It's not that there are so many more now -- it's just that now we know what to look for. A kid with what we now know as Asperger's was once just labeled "weird." Similarly, we all knew kids with ADHD in school -- they were the wild, undisciplined kids who couldn't behave (not "wouldn't," but actually couldn't), or couldn't perform, or were labeled "stupid" or "lazy" and for whom the "treatment" ranged from failure to spanking. Ask any adult who lived through ADHD as a kid -- they remember, and they will tell you it exists. In serious cases of mental illness, children were labeled as anything from "retarded" to any other number of other maladies, and parents were urged to send them away to hospitals or institutions, perhaps forever. We're not talking about "quirky" or "different" kids here, or rough-housing little boys who are simply expelling energy -- we're talking about children that are often suffering terribly from the disorders that plague them. Ms. Warner also dispels the myth that practically "all" children are on medication. In fact, a very small percentage of children are medicated, probably fewer than actually need treatment. Most compellingly, she notes that, while it is encouraged, and even admired, for an adult to admit to and seek treatment for a mental illness, for some reason people don't want to extend that same privilege to children. That there is the idea that we should, without reservation, celebrate these "quirks" and "differences" and allow children to "outgrow" them, or alternatively that such children are simply budding geniuses and that treating them would stifle their creativity. What people seem to ignore while they are romanticizing these "differences" is that the children in question are often suffering ter