3 Ways Children Are Misdiagnosed With Mental Illness

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this video are those of Derrick Hoard LMFT and The Situational Therapist; they do not reflect the viewpoint of my profession nor my professional association.

Mental Illnesses are voted into existence by a committee of "psychiatrists" whose entire livelihood depends upon pathologizing normal responses to abnormal situations and calling them diseases. Without this, there would be no need for the field of psychiatry. For the field of psychiatry to justify its existence, it has to take our normal responses and re-label them into problems that need to be fixed.   Mental Illnesses are nothing more than labels given to a variety of trauma responses that people can have.  I had someone tag me in a video and ask me, "Well what about when children have a mental illness and why doesn't therapy teach children how to cope with taking medication" and, honestly, I became incensed.

Children are not born mentally ill. I do not care what your therapist, pediatrician, or psychiatrist says.  Here are 3 ways that mental illness gets misdiagnosed in children.

1. When you're dealing with an "anxious and concerned parent.

Because "mental illnesses" are nothing more than labels used to describe a cluster of behaviors, children are often diagnosed as "mentally ill" due to the observations of an anxious and concerned parent".    All you need is a parent who is avoiding an obvious truth in their lives, a truth that they have every right to be anxious about such as "the need to leave an abusive partner", "their lack of coping skills for their own anxiety" and a mental health professional who projects their inner desire to please their own parents onto the "anxious and concerned parent".  Instead of the parent focusing their attention on managing the issues in their lives, they instead focus all their attention on their child's behavior.  Everything the child does becomes a symptom such as "running around too much" "sitting too still", "talking too much", "not talking enough ,"not eating enough", "eating too much", and because mental illnesses are diagnosed through questionnaires and not blood tests or brain scans, you can bet there is some diagnosis that encompasses that behavior.  The "anxious and concerned parent", goes to a mental health professional who jumps at the chance to fulfill their unconscious desire to make their own parents happy and does an "assessment" with the child who, obviously does not want to be there, the clinician diagnoses the child with ADHD or, Depression, Or maybe Anxiety...its possible they might have disruptive mood dysregulation or oppositional defiant-whatever diagnosis the clinician decides to project upon the child is what they get and this allows the "anxious and concerned parent" to further stay in denial about their own issues because they have to "help their child with their mental illness".  This is also how the troubled teen industry was born, but that's for another video.

2. When their parents have relationship issues

Parents having relationship issues is another way that children get misdiagnosed with a mental illness.  The behavior of children is shaped by and influenced by the environment in which they develop.  If you show me an anxious child or depressed child, I will show you an anxious or depressed family, marriage, or school system.  Most therapists know this and know the dangers of calling out parents (which may include lack of income and a professional complaint) and participate in the shared delusion when parents say "something is wrong with my child".  Often though, it is only the one parent who shows up. You see, what typically happens is that the parents disagree on how to discipline their child as well as what constitutes discipline. This is a conversation the parents should have had before getting together, but because most people get together out of a fear of dying alone and society has convinced us that talking about "serious topics" on a first date is a no no, they never have the conversation until they get into a situation where they should have already had the conversation.

Each parent takes turns telling the other parent that the way they parent is "wrong".  They usually fight and argue and place the child in the middle of their arguments.  You don't need to do research to understand that this has a negative effect on the child.  Usually, the parent with the most influence, IE the primary breadwinner or who screams the loudest, wins, as does their parenting style. If their parenting style includes corporeal punishment, also known as physical abuse, and the opposing parent disagrees, the only option they have is to hope their partner values professional opinion.

So again, the parent becomes "anxious and concerned" for their child and desperately tries to find a way to stop the child from exhibiting the behavior that makes their partner angry.  Much in the same way partners in abusive relationships try to change their behavior to prevent from setting their partner off. The "anxious and concerned" parent goes to a mental health professional, usually alone, and completes the intake paperwork. The therapist, either ignorant of family dynamics or too afraid to say anything, will not ask what the other partner thinks or why they aren't there.   They will give a diagnosis to the child, which the partner takes back to the "head of the household".  Hopefully, the partner is swayed by reason and the diagnosis gives way to compassion, but what usually happens is that this partner becomes angry that they "went to a higher authority," and it causes even more escalation.  Which causes more anxiety in the child, who is often told by the parents to not discuss what goes on in the household, and so this child then goes to therapy to be gaslight by CBT to deal with their "anxious thoughts" or DBT to deal with "distress tolerance", never being validated or asked about the environment that they come from. The child then grows up to become a client in my practice wondering "what is wrong with me?". Nothing, you are a reflection of the environment from whence you came.

Number 3. When you are dealing with an abusive family system.

The third way children get misdiagnosed with a mental illness is when that child comes from an entire family system that is abusive.  Schizophrenia is one of the most overdiagnosed mental illnesses in America for black men.  Schizophrenia has become synonymous with a "crazy person who you should not take seriously".  "They are crazy" is precisely what an abusive family system would want you to think about the whistleblower in the family.  When I was younger, My family told me that I was "too sensitive" when I would tell them that the things they were saying were mean. My mother would yell back, "I am not yelling," when I would call her out for yelling at me.  My mother would beat me and tell me that "it doesn't hurt that bad" in response to me telling her how much it hurt. Everyone and I mean everyone except for "my crazy cousin," gaslit me and my feelings. I was taught not to believe what I saw, felt, or heard. My mother "specifically" and family "generally" denied any correct perceptions I had of myself or the people around me.  My mother's favorite phrase was, "who do you think you are?"  I also grew up in an environment with people who believed angels and demons were real and unclean spirits caused mental illness.  I have worked with adults who came from entire families of alcoholics, LGBTQ individuals born into conservative Christian families, and individuals who experienced sexual abuse at the hands of family members that the whole family participates in denying abuse actually occurred.

Being in these situations is enough to drive anyone insane and it usually does and instead of the mental health system being a place where they find relief, they are instead retraumatized, institutionalized, and medicated so that they shut up.  Why is it that people who are sent to mental institution sometimes get better and then get worse after a visit from the family, or when they are sent home are sent right back to the institution?  It is because the problem IS AT HOME and no one wants to talk about it.