Maybe ADD explains dad’s behavior

From the New York Times:

AS more youngsters than ever receive diagnoses of disorders — the number has tripled since the early 1990s, to more than six million — many parents have come to recognize that their own behavior is symptomatic of those disorders, sometimes in a major, but more commonly, in a minor way. In effect, the diagnosis may spread from the child to other family members, forcing each to confront family frustrations and idiosyncrasies that they might prefer to have left unacknowledged.

… diagnosing an adult through his or her child has its risks, psychiatrists say. In an act of solidarity, parents may exaggerate similarities between their thinking and behavior and their son’s or daughter’s. Families desperate to find a diagnosis for a troubled child are also prone to adopt a vague label — bipolar disorder, say, which is not well understood in young children — and attribute all variety of difficulties to it, when the real source may be elsewhere.

But psychological experts say traces of a disorder in the family tree are very often real, and the stickier issue is what to do once they surface.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 9th, 2007 at 10:25 am and is filed under ADHD, attention deficit disorder, families, medicine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post