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Ed Yeates ReportingMental health professionals say using anger to try and deal with a child's serious behavioral illness is more common than we think. However, it should never reach a level of violence, no matter how irrationally justified it appears to the parent.
Licensed clinical social worker Clare Coonan, with Valley Mental Health, works with kids with serious behavioral problems all the time. Reactions from parents trying to deal with these issues are usually within reason but often highly unpredictable.
Clare Coonan, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, V.M.H.: "Certainly there are children whose behavior is exasperating, frustrating, bringing to the edge of a parent. And at that point I would hope, as a parent, you are saying, you know I'm finding it very hard to deal and work with my child.'"
At that point, intervention with professionals who can help - who can get the child on medication if necessary - becomes absolutely essential. Though it doesn't happen often at an early age, if a ten-year old is in fact diagnosed with a bi-polar mental illness or the more common Attention Deficit disorders, anger against the child only intensifies anger and the symptoms of the illness.
Clare Coonan: "The parents experience frustration and anger and then we get into a feedback loop, this anger cycle that makes everything worse."
On the average, Valley Mental Health sees about 5,000 kids per year with behavioral problems, and out of that number, five to six hundred need more than just outpatient care.
Clare Coonan says licensed agencies all over the valley are trained to work with not only the patient but families as well. Many too, she says, are now using some new rather revolutionary techniques for anger management.
Though it happens, nobody should slip through the cracks. Coonan says, unfortunately, mental illness still doesn't have parity with physical illness for insurance coverage. Cost alone sometimes keeps families from seeking help.
