Overcoming ADHD and Bipolar Bias
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The Challenge
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People who suffer from mental illness are ignored by the majority of people in any community and actively shunned by some. The inability---or refusal---to understand the realities of mental illness creates, if not prejudice, at least a bias against people who suffer from these very real conditions, many of which have no known cause and for which no cure can be provided. Two conditions, attention deficit disorder (ADD or ADHD) and bipolar disorder (also known as manic depression), are common enough to affect thousands of adults and children. They can occur to a lesser degree (as among high-functioning individuals) or a greater degree (profoundly-affected individuals) in the population. The conditions manifest themselves in behavior that ranges from distracting to offensive to those who are ignorant about or unsympathetic to the conditions. Ensuring that information in the media about ADD or bipolar disorder is accurate, and that health education includes meaningful material on mental health, are two obvious ways to combat bias concerning these conditions.
Early and Accurate Diagnosis
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Most parents know when there's something not quite right with their child, but many hope that it's part of a "phase." Some ignore problems the child may have with others and in school, which can even include getting involved in childish squabbles with other adults. Worse still, some doctors over-diagnose the latest problem. ADD and bipolar disorder are two such conditions. Bias creates a leap to judgment by relatives, educators and caregivers, locking many children into a sad pattern of psychiatric therapy and psychotropic drugs that ends badly for everyone. Wise parents overcome their own embarrassment and insist on a complete diagnosis by qualified specialists. These doctors and caregivers neither accept a convenient diagnosis nor deny the need for any intervention--the extremes of treatment resulting from biases that paint ADD and bipolar disorder as either life-defining or imaginary conditions. When caregivers are honest with themselves and their children, and resolve to use appropriate interventions, the self-proclaimed "experts" in the schools and general medicine can be put in their places, and ineffective or dangerous "one-size-fits-all" treatments can be avoided.
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Support Systems
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Social bias creates a jungle of help and outrage, at once excusing and condemning mental illness. Competent doctors and caregivers establish or discover support groups to help develop strategies for guiding their patients or charges through these biases. Professionally-based support groups may use tools like anger-management therapy and counseling to help patients (and their families) learn to manage triggers for their conditions that result in inappropriate, bias-reinforcing behavior. Informal support groups, consisting of patients and caregivers, provide a community that acts to educate and empower people, and to counteract the isolation that is enforced by social biases. Online communities have added a new aspect to social support groups, allowing national and international groups to share with each other. In the end, it is courage and this type of communication that will educate the community at large about the contributions that can be made by special-needs individuals, and will overcome the bias that exists.
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Resources
- Photo Credit Microsoft Office clip art
