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Camp Huntington is a co-ed, residential program for children and young adults with special learning and developmental needs. The daily activities offered at Camp Huntington stimulate a child's awareness and interest in their environment and relationships, motivating them to build important foundations of self-confidence, self-efficacy, personal growth and independence. Learn more about Camp Huntington >>

More Parents Joining Their Children in Treatments for Mental Disorders

Your doctor has just diagnosed your child with attention deficit disorder. As she discusses ADD symptoms with you, you see yourself in those symptoms. You realize that, like your child, you too have problems paying attention when others speak, focusing on a task, organizing your work, keeping appointments, and so on. Suddenly, your life makes sense as you realize you have been struggling with ADD for years yourself.

In the past ten years, there has been a surge in diagnoses of childhood disorders like ADD, bipolar disorder and Asperger Syndrome. Since the early 1990s, the number of new childhood cases of disorders has more than tripled. The latest survey from the Center for Disease Control indicates that one in every 150 American children has autism. As millions of children receive medical treatment and interventions at school, many of their parents realize that they have similar issues themselves.

"It is happening very frequently," according to Dr. Gregory Fritz, the academic director of Bradley Hospital in Providence, RI, the largest child psychiatry hospital in the United States. In an interview with the New York Times, Dr. Fritz said, "Sometimes it's a real surprise because the child is the first one in the family ever to get a thorough evaluation and history. The parents are there and they begin to see the pattern."

Experts like Dr. Fritz report that the parents' new understanding of their own problems can be both a good and a bad thing.

Some parents feel guilty for "passing on" genes that may have created their children's disorders. Others have suspected for years that something was wrong with them, but would rather ignore it.

Dania Jekel, director of the Asperger Association of New England, said, "The adult may have spent a lifetime compensating for the problem and is still struggling with it and would rather not be identified that way."

However, many adults experience liberation after receiving a diagnosis of a neurological or mental disorder. Author Diane Kennedy describes in her book The ADHD/Autism Connection how her family came to better understand and accept her husband's behaviors once they put them within the context of high-functioning autism. Her husband received that diagnosis after their three sons were in treatment for Attention Deficit Disorder.

In other families, finding out that one or both parents have the same syndrome as their children lessens the guilt a child may feel for being a problem to his or her family. The parent and child can undergo treatment together and share new coping strategies. In that way, the parent with the syndrome becomes the child's main source of support.

See "Your Child's Disorder May Be Yours Too" by Benedict Carey, The New York Times, December 9, 2007.

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