Mental Health and Judaism

Mental health is a very broad subject, what specifically where you looking for ?

The potential for abuse in the mental healthcare system is ignored entirely.

AJ:

You wrote: “Unfortunately, too many families have let mental issues go untreated and unacknowledged because they were worried it would ruin the shidduch opportunities of their other children”

You are certainly correct about that. What these families forget is that a psychiatric illness can be better covered up and kept secret if it is treated and there is absence of symptoms. Otherwise, one can safely say that there is no history of psychiatric illness, but the candidate is nuts. That actually reduces chance for a successful shidduch.

Having noted this, withholding such information to facilitate a shidduch is, in my opinion, criminal behavior. I believe the Chofetz Chaim spoke about this, and that withholding such information is wrong. I leave it for others to quote the citation from the CC.

Not every secret causes a shidduch to fall into the halachic category of mekach taos. In fact, most don’t.

Joseph, the serious ones do.

You mean real mental health issues like schizophrenia, or the made-up stuff like ADD?

I don’t deny that there are kids who are exceptionally hyper or have above average difficulty staying focused. I deny the 20th century concept that a very common and mundane human character trait like that should be labelled as a disorder and medicated. Especially when the medication turns the kids into zombies.

I have found a problem that happened to my son where he was diagnosed ADHD. His rebbi knowng this, lowered his expectations and thereby he reinforced this diagnosis.

Laskern- that doesn’t make sense. That’s like saying your doctor told your wife you have diabetes so she stopped giving you candy and now it’s true. Lowered expectations *can* (potentially) cause lower performance, lower self confidence, lower motivation and lower grades. But it can’t change an attention span from typical to clinical levels. Your doctor seems to have been remiss in helping you understand the diagnosis

It took away his accouragement thereby having less enthusiasm to learn and created a self fulfilling prophesy.

It’s not really possible to do an experiment to determine whether or not a diagnosis of ADHD is harmful.

Neville, in order to disagree with every single person on this thread, I am going to accuse you of indirect racism.

Neville- your comments aren’t even legitimate enough to qualify as a troll post. And that’s besides being a wee bit too defensive about the topic.

“Neville- your comments aren’t even legitimate enough to qualify as a troll post.”
There are people in the scientific community who agree that ADD is not a true disorder. Are you offended that your kid who doesn’t get straight A’s might not have a golden excuse according to some?

To say that humans have varying levels of intelligence is illegitimate beyond trolling? Wow. And, I bet you accuse younger people of being overly sensitive. Where do you think they get it? Newsflash: not all humans are born equal. Get over it.

Neville says “You mean real mental health issues like schizophrenia, or the made-up stuff like ADD?”

The irony is that a well known psychiatrist said schizophrenia doesn’t exist back in 2016. But where does your belief end? ADHD doesn’t have a proper test. Neither does Fibromyalgia, MS, lupus, or autism. Do they not exist?

Unfortunately we live in a world where any child that doesn’t conform needs a label. If people stopped giving into their kids and started parenting (disciplining), removed sugars and dyes, shut off the electronics, and made their kids run around, about half the cases of autism, ODD, and ADHD would disappear. Then the doctors could treat the kids that really needed it.

And as someone who grew up with ADHD, there is a beauty to it. We can multitask in a way most people can’t. We see solutions that most people can’t, and solve problems differently. (When I started ADD medications I lost that ability). We have more energy. Similarly, people with autism (another “fake” condition) can be savants and have huge advantages in certain fields.

But back to illness, mental or otherwise. There are issues that can be cured if they are treated early enough, but too many parents are afraid to share the truth. We have come a long way from simply putting people in a home, but we have a long way to go. If someone isn’t violent, they deserve to live the way they were created.

“If people stopped giving into their kids and started parenting (disciplining), removed sugars and dyes, shut off the electronics, and made their kids run around”

Haha! Are you really pretending sugar and dyes effect behaviir? (FAke news!) And you put it on par with screentime and exercise? Too funny.
“, about half the cases of autism, ODD, and ADHD would disappear. ”

Sheer lunacy

Can you provide a rational reason not to consider attention span a type of intelligence?

RY23 sure I’ll try and do that but first please give me a working definition of intelligence.try and be a little specific not just literal

There are two separate issues being discussed here, and the confusion of the two complicates the clarity.

There is considerable empirical support for psychiatric illness, and there is much discussed even in the Talmud. While psychiatry is a soft science (as opposed to hard science – those about things that can be accurately observed and measured), it remains a science which is primarily based on research, not theory. Whether something is a legitimate illness or condition is something i would seek from research, not commenters in the CR. Anyone is free to have an opinion, but one’s belief does not constitute fact.

The second issue is the child in the school setting that is not performing according to some preconceived notions. This calls into play the mission of the yeshiva/classroom, what is the understanding of a child’s inability to perform to perfection (or close) on academic tasks (such as tests), and the ability of the school and faculty to accommodate to help the child.

On the latter, the ADHD diagnosis is a legitimate one, though it has its naysayers. It exists on a spectrum of severity, and there are a variety of symptoms that can exist in various combinations and levels. It is a problem that there are those that fling this label wherever they want, while lacking training to know just when to apply it. It is abused by many in the education field, sometimes being ignored, other times being used to label a child unnecessarily. I bet the medications are overused, but there are also times when withholding the medications is a mistake. The ideal would be for experts to make these determinations. It is often that the symptoms of the ADHD issues are observed in the academic setting, and hardly elsewhere. This responsibility falls on the educators, many of whom are not equipped to handle it.

Just as one cannot use discipline to treat a fever, it is misapplied when used for learning issues, ADHD, and many other behavioral problems. There is a role for discipline, but it often requires much to know just when it is appropriate.

We need not to confuse the issues of mental health and education.

Thus far the mental health professions have not inspired a whole lot of confidence in these areas. It’s an open question if overall they help more then they hurt. I’m not suggesting that we throw out the baby with the bathwater. Just that, in this case, there is an awful lot of bathwater.

“And yes, screen time certainly affects behavior”

I know. My comment was geared toward your attempt to insinuate that eating sugar and dyes is as legitimate an issue as screen time.

PuhLease – thank you, well put. And glad to see you, you sound well!

PuhLease:

I appreciate your comment, articulate, evidence based, and rational. You explained far eloquently than I did about the interplay between education and emotion, being different issues, yet coexisting.

A theme for me, is that schools and yeshivos have engaged in crowd control, filling classrooms beyond the normal teaching control of a single teacher. One of the main tools used is discipline. If that succeeds at controlling the class, fine. But it fails miserably at teaching. And that explains why the successes in our yeshivos are mostly correlated with the internal motivation to learn. And since we cookie cut the curriculum, it is a challenge to adapt it to students whose learning styles are different from the average (or perceived norm). So the poorly performing student is tagged as someone with a problem, and this only feeds the system of disciplining him. The alternative is the labeling and sending the child for a host of evaluations, consultations, and outside interventions. Yes, there are those who need the additional attention and services. But others just need the Rebbe or teacher to extend the helping hand. And this can be done without public embarrassment.

Meanwhile it is equally destructive to whitewash the entire diagnostic category of attentional disorders as to shoot the label at any student that does not conform to the predetermined “norm”.

Thank you to most of the recent posters for creating what is now a thoughtful discussion.

@The Little I know.
1. Thank you.
2. I am going to ramble, and go from subject to subject, and probably lose you a few times because I have MANY squirrel moments as I like to call them. I am SEVERELY ADHD AND ADD, but still managed to stay focused enough to get my many worthless pieces of expensive paper without drugs.
3. I both agree and disagree with some of what you wrote. You are correct that the yeshivos and even the public schools are filled to beyond capacity. However, the interplay between discipline and education often don’t work because the rebbeim and teachers are not taught HOW to teach. Often they are people who need jobs within that community, and poof, instant teacher. But they are not teachers nor instructors. In the “days of old” you had rebbeim and teachers smacking or hitting the students with rulers or even worse, with their hands, causing the children to fear both going to school and learning. This caused generations of students not only to hate learning, but to harbor decades and decades of resentment towards schools, religion, families, and so on, only causing more pain, which often then manifested more abuse, whether in families or in communities.

Sadly, violence often begets violence, and cycles perpetuate themselves unless consciously broken (which is a very difficult thing to do).

These days, there are more educated rebbeim and teachers and morahs even, but it’s rare to find any of these people holding valid state teachers licenses. It’s not like college or university is strongly encouraged. But when it comes to educating our children, education of the teachers should be TOP priority, and it’s really not.

There is a blatant lack of respect that is almost subconsciously encouraged by the schools in how their “English” or General Studies teachers are treated. Regardless if that teacher is frum or not, the English and General Studies teachers are often paid far less, not treated the same with regards to “Bonuses” at yomim tovim or summer break, and left out at Chanukah time because they are (as I was told for many years) “just an English teacher” (even though for quite a large number of years I was the ONLY teacher in the entire school to hold a valid teachers license). Children see that, and learn from it.

Keep in mind btw, that because I was “just an English teacher” I was not entitled to maternity/paternity leave when my children were born, causing terrible financial hardship. But again, that did not matter because I was “just an English teacher”. But I digress… going back to your comment….

A well trained teacher or rebbe knows exactly how to handle both education and discipline in his/her classroom, and can do so without interrupting the flow of the class. A really good teacher/rebbe will keep the ‘troublemaker’ in class, and will adapt his/her teaching style to those of the children in his/her class. For example, a teacher might teach the same unit in visual, audible, and tactile styles, ensuring that all the learning styles of the class are met. And a teacher for older students will ask their students how they learn best, since by high school most children know in what way the information sticks with them. A VERY good teacher will make sure to adapt his or her lessons each year to ensure that the material does not get boring, and that the students will actually learn something year to year. The teacher cannot be bored with his or her lesson either, because that will translate to the students getting bored. The first year I taught, I leaned against the door jam as I was lecturing, and essentially bored myself to sleep. I realized that if I was bored enough to fall asleep WHILE talking/teaching, my students were even more so. I immediately changed everything about the way that I taught.

Teaching and educational methods, along with ways to ensure that lessons work, how to evaluate those lessons, and how to deal with children with behavioral needs, special needs, ADHD and ADD children, even children on the pervasive development scale, could all have those needs met in a multi stage and mainstream classroom, but these methods that are taught, and often taught WELL in college. But, college educated teachers are far and few between in yeshivos and day schools.

3. You are absolutely correct about cookie cutter lessons, but again, there are ways for a creative teacher to “spice” those lessons up, and change them, even slightly, from year to year. What unfortunately does not change, is that schools that get any money from the government for any reasons, are required to have their students take state exams of some kind, all of which are standardized. Thus, the teacher finds him or herself teaching to a test, which is basically a lot of useless information that the children will never, ever use.

Additionally, there are a large number of extremely bright, intelligent children, who do not test well, and therefore, are then labeled and stuck in classes that are not good for them, often boring, etc. (which can then cause additional problems), all because of an asinine test that hasn’t changed since its inception, and is essentially a tool that sets many children up for failure. And those children, because they have been improperly labeled or tagged, will therefore never have their true educational needs met.

Norms, as you state, are a very very dangerous thing. By definition, and of course statistically, a child that doesn’t meet that specified percentage of the “norm”, or doesn’t quite meet the required numbers, is then statistically set up for failure each and every year post that first test. The first failure that a child becomes vitally aware of, will be the measurement that both they, and the schools, will measure them for the remainder of their academic career. Making a predetermined norm is likely one of the most destructive things that schools, as well as diagnosticians could have possibly done.

I could give an individual an assessment and if that individual scores a 31 or higher on certain scales, they would be “predetermined” to be a psychopath, exhibit psychopathic behaviors, etc. If that individual becomes aware of their score, they then have an excuse to behave in an inexcusable manner, saying “well, this is what I am because someone told me that this is what I am. Take it up with them”. If the person has no knowledge of where he or she falls on the psychopathy checklist, he or she could end up becoming something brilliant and amazing. Perhaps he or she goes on to cure cancer. That person never takes advantage of his potential situation just because they might fall on a scale set up by a person or group of people who think one way and one way only.

And, it is in my personal opinion, that conforming to any predetermined norm has the potential to be very dangerous. People become sheeple instead of potential leaders, children with exceptional imaginations have them lectured or beaten out of them, when the imagination could have created something amazing. Conformation… is dangerous if not done correctly. We are not encouraging our children to be something amazing and wonderful, something different. We are telling them to do exactly what the rest of the children do. So, if the rest of the children act like vilde chayas, then we are telling our child, conform to that, that’s the way to do it. If as adults, the general norm is to cheat and lie on one’s taxes, and then use HUD, Welfare, Medicaid and food stamps… that’s the norm that we anticipate out children will conform to. But it’s still not right, even if everyone else is doing it.
Additionally, I want to add something that is “hinted to” but not stated outright. Just because a child is different in how he or she thinks, or that individual questions G-d, or even his or her religious observance, does not mean that this person is mentally ill or unstable. And, it is exceptionally important in today’s day and age, that we not immediately insist that people who act differently, perhaps not as “expected” or a person does not “conform” to something he or she is morally, ethically, or simply just opposed to, immediately run to seek mental health assistance. We do a tremendous disservice to people when we take someone who does not conform, and stick them with a mentally ill tag.