Chapters 9 & 10

 

Chapter 9 discusses mental health diagnoses. I haven’t seen it so much lately, but a few years ago, I would consistently see children on my caseload be diagnosed with ODD. I absolutely despise that diagnosis. It left the child with this stigma that they can’t be fixed. It labels children as not being able to function like their peers. It makes me think about how professionals in the helping field continue to do the same thing over and again expecting a new outcome. I don’t understand how professionals continue to treat people without knowing the full story of that person. Chapter 9 also talks about incest. I can’t imagine the life long impact something like that does to children. My niece was sexually abused by her older half-brother. She is doing ok now and has successfully completed individual therapy. But I wonder as she gets older how her trauma will be revealed in other ways.

Chapter 10 discusses eugenics. The expression of genes passed down for generations and how those genes present in children/mothers who have been exposed to trauma. This is great information to have. But it makes me think about starting intervention from the beginning. I’m talking about birth control and safe sex education. I’m not talking about rape victims, etc. I believe that when we are encountering women, education regarding birth control, and safe sex needs to be a topic. We need to start the intervention prior to pregnancy. Birth control needs to be free for all women. Education needs to be presented in a non-judgmental way. If we can attempt to intervene before we continue multi-generational issues, perhaps we can stop the cycle of trauma that engrains so deeply in our bodies. I know that is a huge task, but it’s something I began thinking about in this chapter. I get tired of society putting road blocks up for women and then blaming us because we couldn’t overcome something. I currently have a client who is a teenager. She expressed that she is sexually active. She is living with her maternal aunt and the aunt took her to a doctor. The mother would only agree to the shot birth control. After talking with the medical provider, the pill was given to the teen. Now, this mother has a gamut of issues. But I question why this mother would put a barrier to a specific kind of birth control. As women we need to empower other women. It’s disheartening.

Both chapters show how it is extremely hard to change the minds of people in the professional world. We must use the data that we collect from studies and from any neuroscience information to help people with the right intervention for them. I loved reading the statistics in chapter 9 about other countries. Why is it so hard for the US to model the same thought processes as other countries?