OCD and Medical Child Abuse

As I’ve written about before, our family faced many issues when my son Dan spent nine weeks at a residential treatment center for OCD. There’s no question the staff there knew how to treat OCD. What they didn’t know, and what they couldn’t know, was my son: his hopes, his dreams, his values, him.
Instead of being invited to work together with the staff to figure out the best plan for Dan, my husband and I felt shut out. We also sensed we were viewed as part of the problem. So when I read this New York Times article entitled “The New Child Abuse Panic,” I broke out into a sweat. This could have been us.
I highly recommend reading this important article, which discusses how parents are increasingly being charged with “medical child abuse.” The author, Maxine Eichner, says:
Although most of these cases have nothing to do with real child abuse, credulous child welfare officials have too often supported the doctors, threatened parents with loss of custody, and even removed kids from their homes — simply because the parents disagreed with the doctor’s plan of care.
The most widely publicized case, which is discussed in the article, involved Justina Pelletier, a teenager who was being treated for mitochondrial disease. Her parents lost custody of her and she was forcibly removed from her home for 16 months because some doctors disagreed with the diagnosis, which was later confirmed.
I remember hearing her story on the news a couple of years ago, and t...

Source: Psych Central - May 8, 2016 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Janet Singer Tags: Abuse Caregivers Disorders Family General Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Parenting Psychology Anxiety Avoidance Caregiving Child Abuse child welfare custody Justina Pelletier Maxine Eichner Ocd Stigma Source Type: news