Sometimes the medical belief that their evil is biological, where social, says psychiatrist John Vasen
Josefina Licitra
Published in "The Nation" on June 2, 2010
JUAN Vasen is a child psychiatrist. Working with children and adolescents since, after graduating from the medical career, became the residence in childhood psychopathology in the Hospital Ricardo Gutierrez Children, where he later would serve as chief resident. She has published six books that try to put the children in question the context and tone method strongly pharmacological science today is to address children's issues, mainly the so-called (and widespread) ADHD. Serves
privately and is co-founder of Nurturing Care Program, the local zoo for children with serious emotional problems.
Among his books: "Post Mocosita?", "Contacto animal" and "Ghosts and pills." Questioning
Tags: so called group of professionals that integrates and works the medicalization of childhood.
Inattention (ADD), pervasive developmental disorder (PDD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and bipolar disorder are some of the diagnoses with which children come to professional consultation with John Vasen. But Vasen, MD, a psychoanalyst and child psychiatrist, says that most of these patients are not usually sick, let alone creatures designed to be medicated. Are simply time-bound children in which they live. "Sometimes they are attributed a disease and the medication, when what happens is that kids are responding to a family and, above all, to a time ? Explained?. Age determinations are very important. So much so that sometimes the kids are closer to the time that their own parents. "
" The psychotropic drugs are increasingly present in the daily lives of the kids, "says Vasen. Sometimes, this presence comes accompanied by an intelligent approach to use, as it comes along with a therapeutic approach. But any disease that is treated with psychotropic drugs as the only intervention in the life of a child may be considered iatrogenic, ie doctor's responsibility. "
Under Vasen, the decade of 90 was a hinge in child psychiatry. Then he began to believe that any production of the brain, including subjectivity, was a consequence of genes.
- Why is this reading would be problematic?
"Because it's wrong and dangerous to understand biology as carrier of destiny. Many professionals engage in a series of projections, generally catastrophic, which tend to be frightening for parents. They say things like, 'This guy is going to have such a picture for life and that medication will be crucial. " The boy happens to have a symptom to be the symptom. In many classrooms, teachers say, "I have a ADD" thus loses some of the uniqueness of the child, are left out such important things as the place that has the child in the family, the status of their parents, the child's fantasies, things that scare. He forgets that the determinations of time are producing subjectivity, modes of being of the children.
- What do you mean by "determination period"?
-A, for example, when a child is inattentive, may not have an "attention deficit", but a lack of interest, motivation, is with her head on something else. Raise it as a deficit and that no attention and then what need is dopamine, try to solve the problem with a pill, is a dangerous reductionism.
"What you say is a" child ADD "is not distracted if, for instance, is watching a television program he likes.
"Of course not distracted. 99% of bad guys called ADD, in my opinion, are not.
"One of the biggest problems of the so-called ADD children" is its lack of attention in school. "This may be due to a mismatch between teaching methods and forms of student learning?
-think so. According to the criteria the boy, who need not be accompanied, the school is divorced from what will be the future labor market and life in general. Once a pacientito said: "School education for the school very well." He felt that the school is not serving for life.
"When a case is related psychiatric disorder with a biological problem, what responsibility they bear to parents about this problem?
"In general, poor. All psychiatrists who are clearly in favor of the medication and genetic conditions, tend to exonerate the parents.
"Looks like a rematch, when he had his boom psychoanalysis, was the origin of all the parents?
"Yes. And not only that parents appeared to be guilty. Even as a responsible, guilty. So what better to have someone come and say: "The fault is not with you." Now, parents should not be charged, but neither should be run from the responsibility that affects them.
- Do parents feel guilty for medicating their children?
-are ambivalent. But consider this in terms of the time. Imagine that a relatively humble family with several children and parents who work all day, has a very troublesome child. They have to take a psychological treatment that involves going twice a week to a hospital, wait an hour, go back ... All that may be inadequately replaced by a diagnosis made on the run, a drug and a monthly check. There are conditions that make the medication is a resource much easier for a person with an existence in itself quite uncomfortable.
- How we reached this decision in the middle or upper classes?
-integration, the success that appears as the paradigm of integration, being famous, being a millionaire, which are vocational horizons of many children when they are challenges, that parents do have an obligation to train them very distressing to not fail. And that makes drugs appear as a solution that silences the symptom, which allows the child to adapt and continue to race and to demand less of their parents.
"So in any case is reasonable care?
"You can not generalize. What I am saying is that all practices are limited. Psychoanalysis has it, but it is psychopharmacology. Sometimes medicate wisely can be very important. It can help a very busy guy, excited or scared, to reduce fevers. But this is different from a medication Cosmetic favoring behavior. To pretend that a guy living medicated for years ending hiding under the rug a lot of land which then makes the road impassable.
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