Dr. Harold Koplewitcz indeed does seem to be the kind of informed advocate that our children need. Mental illness is a fact of life and very frequently has nothing to do with bad parenting or traumatic experiences, but rather with genetic predispositions. Neither a child nor a parent can do anything about the genes that have passed on to a child; a distressing anxiety disorder, psychotic spectrum disorder or mood disorder. This is a fact of life, and competent mental health professionals know this. I wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Koplewitcz’s mission of removing the stigma from mental illness among children and teenagers and “make it something to be managed and overcome as it was with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder before it.”
Unfortunately, much of the lay public does not understand mental illness and it is challenging to know how, where and from whom to seek help for a child who is suffering. Indeed, as Dr. Koplewitcz notes, “People think of child psychiatry as playing with kids on the floor” and further suggests that “we need to educate them and change the way they think about childhood psychiatric illnesses, so the shame goes away and it improves access to care.” Amen to that! I treat children as young as 4 years of age for anxiety disorders and never do play therapy simply because it is not effective in treating anxiety disorders. Of course, for very young children much of the work is done with the parents in teaching them how not to reinforce fears and how to reward a child for doing the necessary exposures that are required to alleviate the child’s fears and anxieties.
For the 30-40 children I successfully treat each year for anxiety disorders, I do just what Dr. Koplewicz preaches: I teach the child and the parent, through the scientifically proven methods of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, how to manage their fears and resulting anxiety so that the symptoms either go away or no longer cause distress or interfere with the child’s enjoyment of life. To me, an anxiety disorder, which 3% of all children suffer, is simply something to be managed, not something that has to inflict distress, disrupt a child’s life or be viewed as a stigma to be hidden.