It is hearing the word "psychiatrist" and the acronym "USA" and I get goosebumps. You will think it's my thing, but I have my reasons. Last year they decided to include the children's tantrums, those that suffer the vast majority, within the DSM Manual of Psychiatry as a behavioral disorder.
Thanks to this and many other disorders and syndromes, the CDC (Center for Disease Control) produced an impartial report to quantify children's mental disorders, seeing that one in five children has a mental health disorder. Now this number will most likely grow because psychiatrists and psychologists they are already describing the TCL, a new behavioral disorder that could be considered a cousin of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder).
TCL, another disorder?
Surely more than one will think: "Another disorder?". Already, I think so too. If in Spain it is estimated that 5% of children and young people have ADHD and in the US It is 10%, if you have to add behavioral disorders, mood and anxiety disorders, autism spectrum disorders and Tourette's syndrome, as you will tell me how many children are left that can be considered psychologically healthy.
In this sense I always explain the same. As a child, in my class, we were 40 children. According to the figures, between 2 and 4 had ADHD, between 1 and 2 had behavioral disorders, 1 had anxiety and 1 in two autism classes (although this probably did not go to our school, or yes). And this only in my class, because in the next class the same thing happened to them, and in the next class the same. Are not many children with problems?
Yes, but now they will be even more because the Slow Cognitive Time (TCL), which a group of psychologists and psychiatrists claim to have identified, whose symptoms are opposite to their close relative ADHD. Instead of being hyperactive children, unable to concentrate on anything because they move from one activity to another constantly, children with TCL are passive, dreamers, forgetful, shy and hypoactive. Their academic results are affected by this situation and it is considered that it is because they process the information more slowly.
It is not yet in the DSM, but everything will run
For now not included in the DSM, which is the diagnosis manual of psychiatrists, something like petete's fat book where all psychiatric diseases are, very controversial because they lack scientific bases. To give two examples, two years ago children's tantrums were considered normal and since last year they are part of the manual (ergo children with tantrums often have a problem to be treated) and vice versa, homosexuality was part of the manual until in 1986 decided to withdraw it. In 1985, if you were gay, you had a psychiatric problem. The next year no longer.
As far as I was going, it is not yet part of the DSM, but a growing group of psychiatrists and psychologists are trying to get the TCL recognition as a disorder, since that way a pharmacological treatment can be established for these children.
Since many children have Attention Deficit, but not hyperactivity, it is possible that between 30% and 50% of children diagnosed with ADHD actually suffer from TCL. To these will be added all those children without diagnosis, but with problems, which may fit with the new description of the disorder.
To make the new disorder begin to be known and valued, the magazine Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, dedicated in the month of January nothing less than 136 pages to various articles that talked about her. You can see it here, and the TCL, in English, is known as Sluggish Cognitive Tempo.
Thanks to TCL, more medicated children
In U.S.A. There are a total of 6 million children taking medication to control their ADHD. Only with this figure should their faces be ashamed. I repeat: 6 million children take medication for ADHD. Is this really a disorder you are born with? Because we are facing one of the worst world plagues in history ... well, no, shut up, that the pests are based on diseases that are spread. Well then we are facing one of the greatest genetic mutations in history. A disease or disorder that causes 1 in 10 American children to have attention and hyperactivity problems, and that in Spain is 1 in 20, is what serious enough that we should all wonder what is happening here.
Either we are inventing it, or it is overdiagnosing it, or we have created a world, a society, in which children are deconfiguring us. Wouldn't a society in which fathers and mothers work, need rest and consume leisure and be too restrictive? they have little time for childrenWhich end up not fitting anywhere? Isn't a society where children have no space to burn energy and let their imagination fly? Because when we were little we could be all day in the street, but not now, we had green areas, but not now, we went with our parents to the mountain, but not now, and We have changed the games with friends for the tablet and the consoleIn addition to the spoon, the pot and the snacks for processed and fast food, "there is no time to cook."
They say that thanks to TCL, because this disorder is being discovered, about two million more American children will be able to take medication to help their disorder. Come on, that among those who take it for ADHD and those who will take it for TCL, 8 million children will take a drug aimed at changing behaviors.
That I do not say that ADHD does not exist, I am aware that there are children who are really unable to stay for a while with an activity and I am convinced that they have some type of neurological problem that causes them that behavior, problem with which they were born (call ADHD or call whatever). From there to believe that 8 million children, only in the US They need medication because they were born with a neurological problem going a world, or a sun. Impossible. I don't drink it. No one should swallow it.
Moreover, it is enough for me to know that Rusell Barkleyel, one of the most struggling to get TCL recognized as a disorder, has received between 2009 and 2012 nothing less than $ 118,000 from the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, responsible for one of the most widespread medications to treat ADHD, who are already studying (before knowing if the TCL will be part, finally of the DSM) if those same medications can be used for children suffering from the new disorder.
Returning to my class of 40 students, I remember that there was more than one who had more trouble learning than the others. For whatever reason they needed some extra explanation, a little more time or a little reinforcement. We all considered them normal children who simply needed a little more help, and this came from the teachers or sometimes from us, their classmates. Then, when it comes to relating to others, it depends, some were more shy and others were less.
Hallucinated we would have stayed by then if someone had told us they had a syndrome called TCL and that they had to take medication to be like the others. Hallucinated is how I am now, when I see that the solution to the sick society that we have created for our children does not happen to solve the problems at the root, but to consider that they are the ones who have a problem, for not being able to adapt to she. Do we not see that they are the children, the only ones left with ropes?
