16
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, November 7, 196P
Two 'camps' disturb psychiatrist
By DELOS SMITH
BY DELOSMITH NEW YORK-(UPI)-When mental illness appeared in the family of Dr. John E. Kysar—who not only is a psychiatrist but a professor of psychiatry—the "two camps" of his profession became a personal, painful and harmful reality.
He had known there were two, of course. Even laymen, particularly laymen with mental illnesses in their families, know it. But they had represented mere theoretical disagreements to Kysar until professional brethren blamed him and his wife for their son's illness.
These brethren belonged to the "camp" which traces mental ills of children (and of adults) to faulty child rearing practices. Opposing them in the Kysars' parental ordeal were brethren from the other "camp" which holds mental illnesses can be organic and hence inborn and unavoidable.
Kysar's complaint against parents-blaming psychiatrists probably was the first made by a psychiatrist both as the father of a mentally ill child and as a psychiatrist. He made it in a professional forum, the Journal of the American Psychiatric Association, under the title, "The Two Camps in Child Psychiatry."
But such complaints have become rather rife in psychiatry and in lay circles concerned with mental illness, and they're by no means limited to child psychiatry.
All this is the background of the case Kysar made in the psychiatric forum. He is associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois, Chicago. His son, Tom, is mentally retarded. When the boy was four a medical team, including another psychiatrist, found he had brain damage and thus retardation was organically based.
Two years later a child psychiatrist acting for the local school district found that he had childhood schizophrenia by which he meant the illness was "environmentally induced and the causes were to be found in the family."
As a psychiatrist, Kysar disagreed. To him a "label" seemed unimportant since the child psychiatrist and his associates were putting Tom into a special class for disturbed children. But Mrs. Kysar reacted differently. "My wife was propelled by her
November 14 RED DOG
own irrational,unjustified guilt to search out 'the sickness' in herself," he said.
The Puzzled Parent
Kysar called in a prominent neurologist who confirmed the boy's brain damage. Kysar thought the child psychiatrist would then reconsider. But "instead I was regarded as 'defensive' and neurotically competing."
Months passed. Tom's condition remains unchanged, despite the "therapeutic classroom" and Mrs. Kysar's efforts—guided by the psychiatrist's social worker —to apply psychoanalytic techniques within the family.
"Once again one might suppose that the child psychiatrist would reevaluate the initial premises," Kysar continued. But he did not and the Kysars were urged to send Tom off to a residential school for two to five years because "the home is where he got sick, so he should be removed from there."
The psychiatrists of three such schools examined Tom. All agreed his illness was family-induced and he was NOT retarded. One even said, "Tom is potentially a very bright boy." However, each found reasons for not accepting him. To Kysar this meant they harbored doubts
even though they "did not hesitate to perpetuate the myth."
"Finally my wife became disenchanted," he said. "Gradually she became able to assess more skeptically the insinuations that Tom's disorder was family induced. A process very painful to her ensured of recognizing the extent of the brain damage and accepting the limited possibilities for Tom's improvement without giving up all hope."
Tom now is eight and a half.
living at home and attending a special school which Kysar had to organize. Most of his early hyperactivity and morbid withdrawal into self have disappeared. "What remains are clear signs of retardation but nonverbal relatedness and willingness to try to learn within his capacity are evident," Kysar said.
Kysar said the dogmatic narrowness of the parents-blaming "camp" of psychiatry displayed
insufficient professional training, and its capacity for harm is being magnified by the availability of federal and states funds for the "education of all types of handicapped children."
Of "crucial importance," he stressed, is the right kind of training for child psychiatrists and other mental health personnel.
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