Includes bibliographical references and index.

Why are doctors, teachers, and parents incorrectly diagnosing healthy American children with serious psychiatric conditions? Gnaulati examines the factors that have led to our current crisis, provides parents with information about symptoms that to a casual or untrained eye can mimic a psychiatric disorder, and gives parents of struggling children hope, perspective, and direction.

Discusses why doctors, teachers, and parents incorrectly diagnose healthy children with serious psychiatric conditions and how to distinguish normal childhood behaviors from those that require medical attention.

Why are doctors, teachers, and parents incorrectly diagnosing healthy American children with serious psychiatric conditions? In this book the author examines the factors that have led to our current crisis, provides parents with information about symptoms that to a casual or untrained eye can mimic a psychiatric disorder, and gives parents of struggling children hope, perspective, and direction. In recent years there has been an alarming rise in the number of American children and youth assigned a mental health diagnosis. Current data from the Centers for Disease Control reveal a 41 percent increase in rates of ADHD diagnoses over the past decade and a forty-fold spike in bipolar disorder diagnoses. Similarly, diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder, once considered rare, has increased by 78 percent since 2002. The author, a clinical psychologist specializing in childhood and adolescent therapy and assessment, has witnessed firsthand the push to diagnose these disorders in youngsters. Drawing both on his own clinical experience and on cutting-edge research, with this book he has written the definitive account of why our kids are being dramatically overdiagnosed-and how parents and professionals can distinguish between true psychiatric disorders and normal childhood reactions to stressful life situations. He begins with the complex web of factors that have led to our current crisis. These include questionable education and training practices that cloud mental health professionals' ability to distinguish normal from abnormal behavior in children, monetary incentives favoring prescriptions, check-list diagnosing, and high-stakes testing in schools. We have also developed an increasingly casual attitude about labeling kids and putting them on psychiatric drugs. So how do we differentiate between a child with, say, Asperger's syndrome and a child who is simply introverted, brainy, and single-minded? As the author notes, many of the symptoms associated with these disorders are similar to everyday childhood behaviors. In the second half of the book hei tells detailed stories of wrongly diagnosed kids, providing parents and others with information about the developmental, temperamental, and environmentally driven symptoms that to a casual or untrained eye can mimic a psychiatric disorder. These stories also reveal how nonmedical interventions, whether in the therapist's office or through changes made at home, can help children. This book reminds us of the normalcy of children's seemingly abnormal behavior. It will give parents of struggling children hope, perspective, and direction. And it will make everyone who deals with children question the changes in our society that have contributed to the astonishing increase in childhood psychiatric diagnoses. -- Publisher's description.