Development of Mental Health

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Do the kids get told if they have, say, the Asperger's these days?

Back when I was 10 or so, I lived in Finland, and I still do, but I was wondering why I was different from other children. Everyone is different, but there was something special 'wrong' inside my head. I would have been glad to have someone, like a doctor, to tell me that I have the Asperger's. That's because I then could have looked down from a book what the Asperger's is. Yes, the internet wasn't such a big thing when I was 10. I could have read a book and recognize the symptoms.

Yet, there I was in 2004, 19 years old, and they actually let me to the army. Basically all the Finnish men have to go to the army, it's a bit complicated to avoid it. I also had a dream to advance in the army and get promotions. Then I spent a month in the army and was pointed to the mental hospital. Not until then I was told I have the Asperger's!

[Blademaster]

Every kid gets told they have something. In the U.S., one in 68 American kids is diagnosed with autism. Why do you think everyone's on pills nowadays?

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Thanks, Blade! Well perhaps the Finnish system back there saved my childhood from drugs. But I should have been able to tell the military reqruiters that I just can't come. I was too interested in trying the army career.

Now I'm prescribed to Abilify, Absenor and Olanzapin. I drool but I can't sleep without them.

To me, it seems that there are more and more sick people in Finland. That might be because we moved too fast from agrarian society to information society. The world is too stressful, you have to be available and conncted everywhere and do every work. In Great Britain, for instance, they had this industrial society period a lot longer than ours.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Also, have kids been told about their mental illnesses for 10 years or so?

[Magmar]

When I was a kid, I was misdiagnosed and overmedicated for a mental illness I do not have (ADD). It turns out I was just bored in class because I was advanced. I can recall information easily with high levels of detail, so the repetitiveness of school bored the hell out of 6 year old me. I just didn't need all the review. I finished tests quickly and shouted out answers in class. When you're 6 years old you don't realize that other kids don't have that same recall skill right away--especially when you're an Intuitive type who takes in the big picture and fills in the blanks later. I was never rude... just kind of a know it all. So they put me on pills, because my childish impatience and boredom were interpreted as a disability. I even got moved into special education, which made me even more bored.

(Spoiler:) I was also acting up because I was abused at home and desperate to be noticed. I was afraid to go home.

The overmedication resulted in significant weight gain and emotional turbulence (Spoiler:) which did not help with the affects of abuse. Ceasing medication and appropriately challenging schoolwork alleviated the systems, but I was chunky for a while after.

I weigh less now than I did in sixth grade (aged 10).

I did know it was called ADD.

[Asilynne]

In the 80s a lot of kids (mostly boys) were put on ritalin for ADD, which many like in Barry's case, didn't actually have. They didn't know about the side effects of ritalin back then but prescribed it to children anyway. I know some people who developed conditions like narcolepsy from being drugged up on ritalin back then :/

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Whoa Magmar, that was a confession!

I was bullied at school because I had weird opinions, odd habits and got angry too easily. I didn't understand, as we say here in Finland, fart humor. Especially when i still lived with my mother in Kalajoki. The folk in Haapavesi, another town, were more tolerable. Or at least it felt like that.

Asilynne, in that aspect, America seems to be more advanced than Finland. Those problems haven't hit us until now, that the cases like mine have made people think the diagnosis should be made earlier. I guess.