Synopses & Reviews
A veteran clinical psychologist exposes why doctors, teachers, and parents incorrectly diagnose healthy American children with serious psychiatric conditions.
Back to Normal is the authoritative examination of all the factors that contribute to the overdiagnosis and misdiagnosis of ADHD, autism-spectrum, and bipolar disorders in our nation’s children. Drawing on his extensive professional experience and current research, Gnaulati tells the stories of wrongly diagnosed children and shows both how and why schools, medical professionals, and well-meaning parents are erroneously categorizing psychological, temperamental, and behavioral issues as psychiatric disorders in developing children. Back to Normal offers both a social critique of our underpsychologized nation and a tool for parents to see the difference between serious conditions and behavioral disturbances stemming from developmental, familial, or social issues.
About the Author
Enrico Gnaulati is a clinical psychologist with more than twenty-five years of experience providing psychotherapy to children and families. A sought-after public speaker, Gnaulati has published a host of child development and children's mental health articles in professional journals and magazines such as Life Learning, Journal of Psychology, and the Los Angeles Psychologist. He regularly presents to parents groups and teachers, and he has been interviewed by the Los Angeles Times and by best-selling author Wendy Mogel in her book The Blessing of a B Minus. He lives in Pasadena, California.
Table of Contents
Contents
INTRODUCTION IX
CHAPTER ONE
Mad Science and Mad Medicine 1
CHAPTER TWO
The Rush to Diagnose 24
CHAPTER THREE
Casualties of Casual Diagnosing 49
CHAPTER FOUR
Abnormalizing Boys 66
CHAPTER FIVE
The Normalcy of Problem Behavior 77
CHAPTER SIX
ADHD? Or Childhood Narcissism at the Outer Edges? 98
CHAPTER SEVEN
Bipolar Disorder? Or Teenage Storm
and Stress Twenty-First-Century Style? 124
CHAPTER EIGHT
Autism Spectrum? Or a
Brainy, Willful, Introverted Boy? 154
CHAPTER NINE
Parenting with Authority 175
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 208
NOTES 211
INDEX 228