Synopses & Reviews
Millions of parents are facing whether to medicate their children for psychiatric disordersfrom depression to ADHD to bipolar disorder. Now physician and psychiatrist Dr. Elizabeth Roberts explains the risks and benefits of medicating and not medicating children and demystifies and simplifies the process of separating psychiatric illness from the other more common behavioral patterns in children, particularly defiance, or willfulness. Dr. Roberts clearly explains what she discusses every day with the parents of the hundreds of children she treats. How is a parent to know which behaviors are bio-chemical and which are simply the result of willfulness? When should a parent seek a child psychiatrist's help in medicating their child? How can you find a doctor you can trust? When is it more appropriate to use behavioral techniques? Roberts' insight will be invaluable in helping families wade through all the contradictory recommendations that the media, the Internet, teachers, relatives, friends and neighbors, and nonspecialist doctors provide.
About the Author
Elizabeth Roberts, MD, is a board-certified medical doctor specializing in child and adolescent psychiatry. Roberts attended medical school as a single mother, raising three daughters, aged 8, 7 and 4, when she entered Rush Medical College. Today, Dr. Roberts is in both private practice and also medical director of a children's psychiatric emergency room in Southern California, and she has also conducted parenting seminars for the public through hospitals, high schools, and other organizations. Roberts has appeared on Oprah, ABC News and been featured in numerous publications, including the Chicago Tribune. She lives in Canyon Lake, Calif.