Some children really need our help. They suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), learning disability, tics, depression or a combination of disorders. We want to help them, but how? There is a lot to learn about what we call the ‘syndrome mix’.
General bases of diagnosis
The syndrome mix
You start with a real child – a child with feelings, needs and expectations. Add 2 scoops of ADHD, a pinch of Tourette’s and a dash of dysgraphia. Stir gently and you get one of the possible syndrome mixes that a child, his parents, teachers and other professionals may encounter. And what they will have to deal with. Who said children can only have one problem? Often multiple problems in every conceivable combination occur at the same time. Common ingredients of the syndrome mix are:
- ADHD
- learning disability
- disorders on the autism spectrum, such as Asperger syndrome
- sensory integration disorder
- anxiety disorder/obsessive-compulsive disorder
- Tourette’s syndrome
- depression
- bipolar disorder
- oppositional defiant disorder
- central auditory processing disorder
If a child has one of the problems from the syndrome mix, there is a good chance that one or more of the other disorders will occur. Not only is a child often born with multiple problems, these various problems often reinforce each other. For example, a child may have both ADHD and a learning disability; his lack of ability to concentrate will then make it even more difficult for him to learn, and the learning disability will make it more difficult for him to concentrate. Such a mix of syndromes will continue to reinforce itself.
In this way the problems can also become similar. A child who is constantly worrying about all her fears appears absent-minded and that behavior can be mistaken for ADHD. Moreover, a tense child will often be in a tense environment at home and at school. This tense environment may have been caused by the child itself, but the result is that he or she has to deal with tense adults – and that is the last thing such a child wants! And furthermore, many of these neuropsychiatric disorders run in families. And so the child may have to deal with parents who are struggling with their own congenital problems.
There are degrees to every problem. We must distinguish between a ‘problem’ (i.e. something that has a major impact on the quality of a child’s life and requires decisive intervention) or an ‘oddity’ (i.e. an unusual trait that makes a child less aware of is hindered). But even if something doesn’t quite meet the criteria for problem status, it can still be useful to do something about it. John Ratey, a well-known psychiatrist, calls these less serious issues ‘shadow syndromes’.
One possible reason why parents and teachers have trouble figuring out exactly what the problem is is that there is so often more than one problem, and each varies in severity.