Day 33- Parents of Children with Dermatillomania/CSP:My Child is Not Okay
7:52 PM
This article is for parents of
children with OCD, dermatilloamnia, or any other mental disorder. I am focusing
on parents, not out of blame nor to create guilt, but because they are on the
frontlines of the battle against mental health issues. This is because children
are resilient, adaptive and have a high neuroplasticity with which they can
overcome and learn how to manage their mental disorders before it becomes
solidified, layered and integrated into them as they grow older. I am not a
doctor, but someone who sufferers from dermatillomania, and as I am finding
solutions for myself, I am looking back and seeing how much of what I created
for myself could have been prevented in my childhood. Please also see: Day 50 - OCD: From Hiding and Feeling Unwanted to Living and Expressing Fully.
There was a time, perhaps your parents’ generation, where
children were to be seen but not heard, it was as if, so long as the child is
alive at the end of the day, the parenting has been successful. These days,
children’s mental health has become a prevalent issue in many contexts, with
new disorders and prescribed medications seemingly mounting every year. This
unfortunate equation results in parents who may have the best intentions, but
lack the necessary tools required to deal with today’s children’s mental health
phenomena. Part of the problem is that, due to a certain amount of stigma
created over the years, there has been a lack of understanding and forward
motion with regards to the treatment and prevention of mental illness and
disorders. So much of what is suffered in adulthood can be explored and
understood, expressed and discussed with the child as active participant in
childhood. But first, parents on the front lines have to take a look within
themselves to see if there is any stigmatization existent in their own minds, conscious
or subconscious, expressed or implicit. In order for a conversation with your
child to open up, you have to be clear within yourself that there is no
judgment, and that your acceptance of your child is in fact, unconditional.
To this day, 60 percent of people that suffer from a mental
illness will not seek help due to fear of being labelled (http://www.mentalhealthcommission.ca/English/initiatives-and-projects/opening-minds).
It is an absolute certainty that
stigmatizing our children’s mental disorders will only ever prevent treatment
and healing, and limit our children from realizing their utmost potential in
this life. We have to realize that we must become objective about the fact that
our children aren’t okay, and that we do not necessarily know what to do about
it. We must unlearn the stigmatization that has been passed down for
generations because it is a detriment to our children, and we are the only ones
keeping it alive today. We do so by accepting and allowing our own fears,
judgments and reactions surrounding the issue of mental health, disorders and
psychosis, to seep through into our behaviour and attitudes towards our
children. Stigmatizing our children’s mental health renders us blind and deaf,
leaving our children isolated in the face of something that they are
in no way prepared to handle alone.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a stigma is “a
set of negative and often unfair beliefs that a society or group of people have
about something,” whereas to stigmatize means to “describe or regard as worthy
of disgrace or great disapproval.” Now, we don’t have to outwardly say negative
things towards a child, nor do we need to disgrace or disapprove in words to
keep a stigma alive, or to make a child feel stigmatized (marked out or
described as something bad). Simply ignoring the problem, making it seem
smaller than it actually is, or not taking it seriously, indicates that there
is a belief system, whether or not we are conscious of it. If we are afraid or
awkward or uncomfortable around something, or if we ignore it, it indicates
that somewhere within us, there is something holding us back.
In a normal scenario, when a child displays a physical symptom
of an illness, like a lump, a rash or a fever, even if we do not know what the
problem is, we act. We go to the doctor, we do research online, we become
concerned and speak with others, treatments are tried and we even ask the child
how they feel as an indicator of whether or not the treatment is working. This
is normal. The fact that this is what normal looks like makes this a good way
to establish a standard against which behavioural reactions can be compared
when dealing with psychological symptoms of illness. As a parent, when
confronted with possible mental illness within your child, you can ask yourself
what you would do if this were a physical illness. If there is any difference
between your behaviour because the illness is psychological, then that is a
sign that there is some degree of reaction within you. It is up to each one to
investigate what that reaction is, because not doing so is a detriment to the child.
In fact, not only will
non-action end up harming your own child, but it will harm other parents and
children as well, because it is keeping a stigma alive. So long as the stigma
exists, parents will feel like the child’s mental illness is their failure. The
mental illness will become something shameful, and will limit the child into
adulthood. If swept under the rug, mental illness like OCD and dermatillomania,
will not be researched and there will be no prevention.
The first step towards prevention is for parents of children
with signs of mental illness to treat it normally, as I described above, and
for people who have any kind of mental illness to speak out about it, normally.
That also includes taking your child by the hand, and walking the journey
together. Nobody knows exactly what to do when their child is diagnose or
displays signs of a mental disorder, but children shouldn’t be left alone to
figure it out. Listen to your child, he or she might even have solutions we
wouldn’t have imagined. Open up the conversation regularly so it becomes normalized and a vocabulary can be developed. Assist and support your child to become a self-supportive adult.
This s a dermatillomania blog, but the message goes for all
mental disorders and psychological illness. If you would like to see me speak
about OCD and dermatillomania, you can watch my youtube videos HERE.Also watch: Dermatillomania/Compulsive Skin Picking: Physical Body Support Picture: http://www.canadianbfrb.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/parents_child_silhouette1.jpg
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