Sunday Times

[oracle]

deleted

Edited November 3, 2006 by oracle

[smiley]

What a read.

 

I was brought up by a schizophrenic mother... But it was always explained very clearly to me and my brother - i feel we are both very caring by nature, tolerant and loving as a result of being with our mother...

The depression i've experienced recently has been horrendous. Brought on by many things. I pray i'm not having a negative effect on little one .

[Bullet]

So are they saying that autistic spectrum disorders are the mother's fault for being depressed?

Edited April 24, 2006 by Bullet

[jayjay]

Thats exactly how i read it Bullet. They are implying that it is partly down to the mother and the sad thing is that you will get some people out there believing this load of cr*p

jayne xx

[bid]

I don't think that is what the writer really is saying, but it will be very easy for people to interpret it that way

 

Bid

[baddad]

So are they saying that autistic spectrum disorders are the mother's fault for being depressed?

 

Hi bullet - I didn't read it that way, but I can see the possibility is there...

What she was saying was actually quite sensible in my opinion - that the mother's inability to cope had more to do with her own illness than with her son's autism, and that if the mother had been appropriately supported things could have been very different for them both. I thought it acknowledged some of the very real anxieties faced by parents of autistic children and the difficulties faced by the children themselves, but without the usual 'value judgements' or 'blame' that is usually perpetuated by the media. It also highlighted that children (whether AS or NT) living with clinically depressed parents who aren't appropriately supported are likely to suffer the knock on effects of that lack of support...

 

L&P

BD

[Bullet]

Aaah, I get it now!

[oracle]

deleted

Edited November 3, 2006 by oracle

[Brook]

Probably not worth writing this reply, but I really didn't know what to make of that.

 

Brook

[Guest hallyscomet]

I think this is similar to the arguments about the Dr Spock theories of doing the controlled crying, where a lot of parents when they learn parenting are told once you feed the child you put them down, and if they continue to cry then go in after a minute but dont pick them up and then go in lengthening the time each time.

 

The arguments I have heard are the child is still hungry and feeling neglected, the the child grows up with a chip on its shoulder.

 

This is a load of cr*p as far as I am concerned, I was a 100% hands on mum read every book, went to every course available and parent groups, even to a trainer a few days after I came home as I had trouble settling my son, so they showed me many things that could cause my son upsets and how to settle him, and I played with my boy made sure he had the right balance of sleep play friends you name it........ this is just another one of the stupid Psycho Pshchiatrists that have over obsessed with their facts and figures and dont know their ar*e from their face.

 

That feels much better.

 

Sorry moderators, don't know what came over me

 

H>

[curra]

It wasn?t Ryan who drove Alison, literally, over the edge. It was her depression that magnified a difficult situation, faced by thousands of parents, into an impossible one.

 

 

I don't agree with this sweeping and simplistic statement. For starters, the author doesn't seem to know what the cause of Alison's depression was. It is common knowledge that there are different types of depressions and some are reactive to traumatic events and hardships. Then she implies that her depression "magnified" the difficulties that thousands of other parents are able to face and she even gives example of 2 mothers who found fullfilment when they became carers. In other words, Alison 's depression triggered the tragedy and if she hadn't been depressed everybody would be happy. No relation between the lack of support for Ryan and her depression. From my own experience, I know that the cause of my depression is the lack of support and understanding I have to help my son and the increasing social isolation, not that I was raised by parents with mental illnesses or because I'm this way or that way. I've always been an optimistic and strong person but because of the no-way-out situation I'm in, and the bleak future I see for my son, I feel depressed. My faith in God keeps me going, but there are many people who unfortunately have little or no faith. I agree with the author that parents with depression need help, and even more if they have disabled children, but I'm afraid that won't be enough if there is not sufficient support from services for children with ASD.

 

 

Curra

[Flora]

Well I've read this. Gone away and come back and read it again. It starts off quite well, highlighting how raising a child with autism is difficult, and how these difficulties can feel worse when a parent is depressed. Then in my opinion it loses the plot and the author of the article indulges in an egotistical pointless narrative of how a mother's depression can damage the child, probably in an effort to make a plug for their own book. There is no qualififying conclusion so consequently many readers, left to make their own conclusion, will be left with the impression that a mothers depression causes autim and/or behavioural difficulties.

 

Lauren

[mossgrove]

I found the first part of the article to be OK, when similar things have happened in the past thay have been blamed directly on the child's Autism, so the author deserves some credit for not going down that road.

 

She starts to lose me when she talks about the link between hyperactivity and deporessed parents. As you will see from reading this forum and elsewhere , there is probably a higher incidence of depression amongst parents of children with special needs than there is amongst parents of children without special needs, but the reasons for this are complex, and as any responsible scientist will tell you, statistical association does not mean cause and effect.

 

She then goes off at the deep end and starts to talk about 'Autistic ' behaviours in Monkeys caused by the way they were 'mothered' in the experiment, which has uncomfortable echoes of the 'refrigerator mother' theories that did so much harm and have been comprehensively rejected. At this point I agree with Carole that the article starts to make me feel .

 

Simon

[Brook]

Ive read this article three times now, and it's as if it is two articles that have been

made into one, and I'm having trouble connecting the two, as I assume the connection

is what the writer intends?

 

If joe blogs reads this, I could see how very easily it could be taken as 'mothers cause

all the problems because they are depressed'.

 

This article is too jumbled up and very difficult to decipher just what point is supposed to

be being made, if any.

 

Brook

[Surrey]

I am going to treat this article with the contemp it deserves. I've got more than enough on my plate dealing with son, without worry about rubbish like this. This article will no doubt make already depressed parents even more depressed. My marriage broke up because my ex could not cope with my son - but perhaps that was down to me as well???? LOL

[florrie]

I thought it did read as though an environment can contribute to problems , most of us here are trying our hardest to get the best for our children, but environmental stuff and brain stuff does fascinate me, so the following info is for information purposes only.

 

I saw a documentary where children were subjected to the most appalling abuse or neglect from baby hood ie locked boxes and kept in cages and deprived of any stimulation or contact etc , when they were rescued at three or four they were left mentally retarded or with brains that hadn't developed properly so had symptoms similar to autism,

 

I studied montessori who talks about the sensitive periods in the first three years of life where children are so sensitve to their environment that is when they learn to talkand walk and willlearn to be bilingual if brought up with 2 languages and will learn a foreign language at this stage much quicker than any other and usually without an accent that we have when we learn languages later,it is very complex and am trying to be brief. Montessori also did amazing work with children with handicaps, most montessori schools bear no resemblance to montessori

 

wild animals reared in captivity can never be returned successfully to the wild because they never develop the skills they would have done to survive in the wild, Iknow some wild life experts think it can be done but from what I can see they never survive very long even when it is done with expertise ie that whale they returned to the wild was never accepted in whale community and craved human contact he must have been quite lonely, he died shortly after and they call this a success. temple Grandin also discuses similar things in her book Animals in Translation using the mysteries of autism to decode animal behaviour. I have a particular empathy with animals myself so love this book, and cried when I read it

 

I know these are extreme example but that is how I'm able to understand things, by understanding all of this stuff on the brain, and it seems that environment does a play apart, but despite knowing all this my son is still autistic and that is why i found all this stuff out before Iknew he was autistic to try and help his development, and the reason i got depessed is because we lost our home in the early 90s with massive debts and my partners business collapsed and Ihad to take him out of private school that I felt was meeting his needs at the time but Ididn't know he was autistic

 

I don't cope at all very easily, and I certainly wasn't depressed in the first 2 or three years of my son's life but I did expereince the most horrendous abuse as a child and during my early years and I do wonder how much is related to that because I analyze everything in such detail, I can't help it because it is the only way I know how to think

 

I also believe that a more appropriate environment with understanding of asd also does reduce some of the problems, I know for certain with my son this is the case and my own stresses are significantly reduced when I feel it is understood.

 

I hope no one thinks I'm saying autism is caused by environment of course I'm not and I really hope no one is upset or feels they may have caused it, I'm just providing my thoughts on it, and I know for certain that my son still had autism, and I just tried to find out everything I could to help him.

 

I then discovered i had an asd myself, although i'm not quite certain that I want that label now due to the awful prejudice I've received, but I'm not able to cope despite knowing all this stuff i'm not able to apply it or orgainse it in any coherent way and I had a b reakdown due to professionals not understanding what my son needed, and then I ended up negeleting him because I felt so severely depressed and still do and i think my own asd may have made his probs worse.

 

oh god i'm rambling, again sorry.

Edited April 26, 2006 by florrie

[Zemanski]

I've been reading a lot about anxiety, depression and autism over the last few months and the number of mothers of autistic children with depression is much higher than 13%.

 

however, in many cases, my own included, we did not start out that way. I had no problems with depression in Com's early years and in fact, he was referred for assessment largely because of his depression at the age of 6, long before I was having problems. My depression is largely the result of having to battle for years with ignorant educationalists, getting nowhere and seeing my son decline with each passing year.

 

I don't feel guilty, I feel angry.

 

the system makes raising a child with autism a hundred times harder than it ought to be, no wonder we get depressed.

 

Zemanski

[mossgrove]

My depression is largely the result of having to battle for years with ignorant educationalists, getting nowhere and seeing my son decline with each passing year.

 

That is where the author of the article starts to get it wrong. Just because there is a link between children with special nends and parental depression, it doesn't prove that parental depression causes the child to have special needs, and she has written the artivle from the perspective of someone who has failed to grasp this.

[Guest flutter]

dont work for me

i had no problems after dd birth , i was exstatic

did after sons' he is ok

i think some of this can be seen as chicken and egg, what came first?

child who shows diffenrences, medics say dont be daft, parents, espec mum feel inadequate, and deal with life cr*p and slowly loose the place and get down, then maybe medics realise child needs suport, but hey mum/dad is tired and struggling themeslves, and the enormity of this life..