The Difference 1 Makes: Reflections on the CDC Autism Rates
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released its official autism rates this morning: 1 in 88. The rates for boys are even more frightening: 1 in 54. I've been sitting at my desk trying to wrap my brain around these numbers, because to me, they are not numbers, they are shattered lives. My son IS the 1 in 54. He was born in 1997 when rates were somewhere around 1 in 500. He's only 14. In 14 years, this is the explosion. Worst of all, our government has not yet called a national emergency.
Here is the real emergency: For every "1" in these statistics, there are two parents, four... Read More
I believe the answer to that question can be summed up in the wonderful poem that follows, by Emily Perl Kingsley…
Welcome to Holland
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability—to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this….
When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip—to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy... 
Parents determine their level of parenting competence by gauging how well their children have grown and developed over time. It is important that a parent feels competent with their parenting abilities throughout a child’s life because this sense of competence directly impacts the parent’s self-esteem and well-being, which indirectly influence the child. When children are unruly and unresponsive to parental discipline, parents feel that their competence is in question. During adolescence, children act more impulsively, ignore parental guidance and engage in more externalizing behaviors than... 
Special needs children require a level of attention that far exceeds that of other children. Compassion, patience, and understanding are resources that are often quickly exhausted when addressing the demanding task of caring for these special children. As children enter 
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a degenerative neurological condition that affects motor function. A large portion of people who have PD also struggle with psychological problems, including sleep impairment, psychotic episodes, learning deficiencies, anxiety, and even depression, with depression being the most common. The caregivers of individuals with PD are also at increased risk for emotional distress and psychological problems. Very little research has focused on how to reduce the symptoms of depression in PD (dPD). To address this obvious gap, Roseanne D. Dobkin of the Department of Psychiatry... 
Last month’s post focused on what NOT to do and say to a parent who has just been faced with an autism diagnosis. I received lots of feedback and was thrilled by the response. Many of you shared your similar experiences and offered the things that you found most helpful during that very vulnerable time. So what does effective comforting look like?
Hope
Many parents tell me they needed a sense of hope and that finding the right book, teacher, counselor, or doctor helped foster that hope—hope that this wasn’t the end of their dreams for their child and hope that their child could learn,... 
The truth is that depression often breaks up relationships because it is so hard to handle. Preparing a depression plan when the person is not depressed can help the two of you get through the depressive episodes. The plan should be aimed at a shared understanding about the changes in thoughts and behavior depression causes and a commitment to stretch to get through the difficult period of depression. It takes a great deal of effort on the part of both the depressed person and the partner to separate the person from the depression. Yet doing this can be very important to maintaining the relationship.
Try... 
When my son was initially diagnosed with autism he was three-and-a-half. It was the year 2000, and he was right at the crest of what I call "the autism tsunami"—when the number of cases began to exponentially explode. I remember being hesitant to call and tell people, not because of what I had to tell them, but because of the reactions people had. Now that I am treating parents of children with autism on a daily basis, I have recognized similar patterns in the comforting styles and reactions of my patients' friends and family. I've identified three styles of comforting that are least helpful.
The... 
Children who are born prematurely, earlier than 37 weeks gestation, are at increased risk for physical, developmental, and cognitive impairments. Nearly one in every eight children is in this class. These children are likely to experience high levels of stress, behavior problems, and specifically aggression, during their toddler years. Although this dynamic has been well documented, less attention has been given to the relationship between maternal unavailability in 
Any 
Depression doesn’t go away for everyone. For most people, depression is temporary and passes naturally or passes once the person has expressed the feelings and resolved the thoughts causing the depression. But there are a small percentage of people who can talk about their issues, express their feelings, take very good care of themselves emotionally, even take medication and have a great life and still be depressed throughout their entire lives. They may have periods of feeling good, periods of feeling less bad, and periods of feeling horrible, but the depression never goes away permanently.
Major... 
All too often, women and some men (in my experience, mostly women) experience the fatigue of “having it all.” More and more women, by choice or necessity, work a full-time job in addition to family and home responsibilities, leaving little, if any, time for them. Likewise, many of us in the helping professions struggle or have struggled with the balance of giving so much emotionally to not only clients, but also family and friends, and find ourselves depleted. In both cases, it is very easy to face burnout.
When discussing work, we often hear the term job burnout, but how often have you... 
Caring for an aging parent can cause increased stress and decreased mental health. In recent years, the number of people who provide 
More people will care for an aging parent in the coming years than ever before. Advances in modern medicine have extended life expectancy and the relationship between the aging and their 
