I was talking to my sister on the phone yesterday. Her daughter is a single parent, who is not responsible enough to handle raising her daughter. Consequently, my sister has applied for and recieved custody of the child. Sherry is now in the school system and experiencing learning difficulties as well as behavioral problems. Someone in the "system" has labeled her ADHD and ODD (a recent addition to the DSM-IV TR, the psychiatric "Bible"). While I was studying pyschology in university I borrowed my instructor's copy of the DSM and came across a relatively new "disorder" called ODD or oppositional defiant disorder and immediately saw how easy it could be to label a child with this so-called "disorder."
It is no longer admissable to simply call a child in a given situation frustrated because she is having difficulty learning and therefore acting out her emotions in an inappropriate manner. The psychiatric community (and now the teaching profession) seem to find it easier to stick a label on a child and advise that the child be seen by a family doctor or psychiatrist and be prescribed a mind-altering drug, because in the school system today, there seems to be no effective disciplinary measure for such behavior. The child in question happens to have obvious issues - the unavailability of her father, with whom she has had some minimal contact and the inconsistency of her mother, who claims to want to be involved in her life, yet herself has emotional issues that have not been resolved, and is therefore unable to give the child the emotional support that she requires. Sherry perceives (though probably not overtly) that she is somehow "different" than many of her classmates. She comes from an odd background - her grandmother is her primary caregiver and her peers and teachers are aware of this situation. Even in today's society where having only one parent as a caretaker is more commonplace than it was when we were children in the 50s and 60s, there is still the sense that the child's family situation is "outside the norm" and a child can carry an emotional burden that she is "strange and different" from her peers. If she struggles with school activities and academic expectations, she has an additional burden to carry. Is it any wonder that she acts out? I don't believe it is.
If a psychiatrist who is the only reliable authority on the accurate diagnosis of a child's mental health, decides that the label ODD does fit the child's symptoms, then that child ought to have access to ongoing oversight of that psychiatrist and methods other than the administration of pychiatric drugs ought to be tried first.
My hope is that my sister will make certain that it is, indeed, a psychiatrist who is diagnosing this child, prior to consenting to the child being prescribed a psychiatric medication. I hope that whatever the decision is in this case, the child will be helped to achieve in school and that she will find a niche where her particular abilities will be fostered, so that even if she is not inclined towards academic scholarship, she may find a way in which she can achieve and succeed in her life. It is all too easy for teachers to label children that represent a challenge to them with a mental disorder, rather than to find an effective way to enable the child to succeed in school.