Suffer the Children: The Case against Labeling and Medicating and an Effective Alternative - Hardcover

Wedge, Marilyn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393071596 ISBN 13: 9780393071597

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011

Synopsis

A persuasive rejection of mainstream child psychiatry that guides parents to understand their child's behavioral problems without stigmatizing diagnoses.

With more than four million American children diagnosed with ADHD and other psychiatric disorders, taking a child to a psychiatrist is as common as taking them to soccer practice. But, disturbingly, a great number of children experience dangerous emotional and physical side effects from psychotropic medications. Where can parents who are eager to avoid shaming labels and drugs turn when their child exhibits disturbing behavior? Suffer the Children presents a much-needed alternative: child-focused family therapy. A family therapist for over twenty years, Marilyn Wedge shares the stories of her patients. Wedge presents creative strategies that flow from viewing children's symptoms not as biologically determined "disorders" but as responses to relationships in their lives that can be altered with the help of a therapist.

Instructive, illuminating, and uplifting, Suffer the Children radically reframes how we as parents, as health professionals, and as a society can respond to problems of childhood in a considerate and respectful fashion.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"When I was growing up, children were not medicated for behavior problems and, in the thirty years I worked as a therapist, I never referred a child for medications. Now, sadly, anxious, overstimulated children, whose families are struggling with issues within and without, are often diagnosed and treated with powerful and often dangerous medications. This magnificent book thoroughly examines a cultural catastrophe. Dr. Wedge's book will help restore sanity to our ways of dealing with children with problems, which means all children. She is a family therapist who knows both the science and the dynamics of families in trouble. With benevolence and the true fighting spirit of a child advocate, she offers us new ways to help our children have childhoods. I highly recommend this book to doctors, mental health professionals, educators, and that most beleaguered of groups: parents."
                                       -Mary Pipher, PHD, author of Reviving Ophelia and Seeking Peace

About the Author

Marilyn Wedge is a family therapist in private practice for twenty-three years. She has a PhD from the University of Chicago and writes blogs for the Huffington Post, Psychology Today,  and Mamapedia.com. She is a popular presenter at conferences and parent groups. She lives in Oak Park, California.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0393071596
• ISBN 13: 9780393071597
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256