Current Child Mental Health practice is based on two perspectives.
The first is that child mental distress or behavioural disorder maybe the result of organic brain disease and therefore the responsibility of psychiatrists.
The second is that child mental distress, if not organic in origin is “learnt” – either consciously or unconsciously from responding to stimuli. Poor or abusive parenting being a classic example of where inadequate parenting may impact on child behaviour and emotions.
I have no doubt this above is correct for many cases but not all. I now contend that there is also a third category of “cause” that is rarely if ever considered as it does not fit neatly into the medical, educational nor social work frames of reference.
At present I call this third causal force, “Sensory Dysfunction”.
Sensory Dysfunction relates to the capacity of the child to “engage with and comprehend their environment”.
Such a capacity does not relate to any organic brain pathology. Neither is the behaviour the result of anything “learnt”, Sensory dysfunction is caused by the failure of the senses and the brain to harmonize and to integrate one with another. In consequence the child consistently fails to “comprehend” the world in a clear and unambiguous manner. The simplest to tasks become a struggle for comprehension and choosing a relevant response equally difficult.
Examples of the above would be Irlen Syndrome where the child cannot see black on white or double vision where each eye when assessed individually functions correctly but somewhere in the transmission to the brain the image is doubled. Similarly examples can be given from aural (hearing) and physical coordination. With hearing a child may be able to comprehend when talking and listening one to one. But in a crowded classroom all he/she hears is “babble” as the child cannot focus on a single sound source nor can they screen out extraneous sound sources.
Sensory Dysfunction of both sound and vision can come together is deficits of relating to non-verbal communication. Children can completely misread contextual and actual meanings of people and events, resulting in profoundly inappropriate responses to situations. .
How sensory Dysfunction “causes” child mental distress and behaviour is that life in general and, often schooling requires the child to master a series of specific skills and abilities such as responding to instructions, learning concepts (reading) carrying out tasks (addition and subtraction, writing essays) to show personal competence and capacity.
Without an adequate level of Sensory Integration the child will struggle with all or most of the above. This difficulty will be exacerbated by the child who sees his/her contemporaries forging ahead while they languish bottom of the class in everything. The impact on a child’ sense of self cannot be over-estimated. Reactions can be many and varied. One option is to refuse school, lose their temper, lash out at perceived threats by aggression or distraction techniques etc.
Assessment for “Sensory Dysfunction” is not difficult but there is no statutory service available in this country. There are certain individuals with specialist skills but these are few and far between.
At a time when CAMHS are being referred larger numbers of children for emotional and behavioural disorders, this deficit in provision for screening for Sensory Dysfunction” is, in itself a form of insanity,
Does your child have a Sensory Dysfunction issue?
I shall write a separate post on this issue. However a good place to start is by observing what your child chooses to do. Child do what they feel most successful at. Observe what they avoid doing. This will be your starting point.
I shall talk more on this at the RCN conference in August this year.
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