JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY FOR CHILD DEVELOPMENT
1986 Volume 6, No. 2
Neurological Dysorganization and Antisocial
Behavior
Robert J. Doman, M.D.
The National Academy for Child Development
speaks of persons who ineffectively pass through or miss critical
developmental brain levels as being neurologically dysorganized.
This simply means they have a brain which is inefficient in
its ability to receive, process, store and utilize information.
Depending upon which level or levels of the brain that are
involved, the individual may exhibit a number of problems
in areas of learning, socializing and behaving. These inefficiencies
of the brain manifest themselves in a large variety of symptoms.
The world unfortunately views each
of these many symptoms as isolated entities, and thus over
the years an ever enlarging list of labels has emerged. This
ever growing and ever changing list of labels applied to children
has served only to confuse parents and professionals alike.
The end result is either the world accepts the symptomatic
label with all of the inherent limitations on the child that
the label implies or the world attempts to treat the symptom.
Good sense requires that we treat the cause of the problem,
in this case, the brain rather than the many symptoms which
brain inefficiency can produce. The purpose of this paper
is not to detail the nature of NACD's program but instead
to review some of the possible complications of failure to
treat the neurologically dysorganized child.
One of the many labels applied to some
neurologically dysorganized children is "hyperactive."
In a recently published article a ten year follow up of over
100 such children from upper, middle, and lower classes, in
Los Angeles County the author indicated that such "hyperactive"
children showed problems which included:
- Short Attention Span
- Low Threshold of Frustration
- Tantrums
- Excessive Motor Activity
- Learning Difficulties
When compared to a control group of
matched children not having the label "hyperactive"
the ten year study revealed the following:
- Upper class "hyperactive" children were just
as likely to have an arrest record as lower class "hyperactive"
children.
- Upper class "hyperactive" children had an arrest
record which showed they were arrested 20 times more frequently
than the matched control group who were not "hyperactive."
- Twenty five percent of the "hyperactive" group
had to be "institutionalized" at an average cost
of the tax payers of $25,000 per year because of the problems
the hyperactive children have with the law as compared to
1% of the non-hyperactive children.
The solution to juvenile delinquency
is not in putting such children away after they have committed
a crime but in looking at the cause of the problem. In the
case of "hyperactive" children, the cause of the
problem is obviously an inefficient brain. Treat the brain
with a proper program, appropriate for the individual child
as we would with a program at NACD, and thereby prevent the
complications which might otherwise result.
Reprinted from the Journal
of the National
Academy for Child Development
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