Dear Psychiatrist
By Jennie Roberts

Author's Introduction

This book describes the development of our son Tom, who experienced difficulties in most - but certainly not all - mental, physical and social areas. At least from the age of five he was aware of some discrepancy between his own and his peers' performances; an awareness that troubled him but which possibly also acted, for a short time, as a useful motivating force. Certainly he did increasingly well as he went through primary school, exceeding everyone's expectations for him and maybe even coming somewhere near his own ambition, to be as good as his peers - if perhaps not better than them.

When Tom was nine he began to experience bullying, partly because of his very slight hand tremor and partly because he was not as smart as his tormentors, who found several uncomplimentary names by which to advertise this fact. While some steps were taken to stop the bullying, Tom also acted to try to prove that he was not the failure he had been made to feel, for example, by attempting to amass a larger stamp collection than anyone else, though he might need to beg, borrow or steal to do so. Unfortunately, secondary school proved to be yet another bad experience as he was just not able to cope with the demands imposed upon him by so many new teachers and subjects. After a year he was transferred to a school where there was more help for children with learning difficulties but, by this time, his confidence was severely damaged, he thought of himself as a complete failure and, furthermore, the bullying continued. This time he responded by attempting to avoid, or to circumvent by one means or another, situations likely to emphasize his short-comings; an action which tended to emphasize them more, and to invite further bullying. So he continued to withdraw abd sometimes to misbehave (both at home and at school) until he was scarcely communicating, or participating, by any normal means; one particularly dramatic statement being his shoplifting aged fifteen, of a chocolate Father Christmas.

As there had been one previous (if equally petty) offence it was decided that, this time, Tom should appear at the Magistrate: Court. We, of course, attended with him and in this way came to see a report on Tom's case, written by Dr Hunt, chief psychiatrist at The Heights Psychiatric Unit for Adolescents which we had been visiting each month over Tom's fourteenth to fifteenth year. This report, having the express purpose of advising the magistrates, was certainly of great significance to us, listing as it did details from the general Case History (0-15 years). But many of those details were wrong, and others should have been invalidated by later findings; that early IQ for instance established when he was just four years old and subsequently (at the ages of 9, 11 and 14) found to have been fifteen points too low. But it was the low score that featured prominently in the Psychiatric Report, not apparently at odds with an image of a tense, unhappy adolescent who had contributed little to meetings at The Heights, nor with parents who had "... a very poor understanding of their son's limitations" (our account of his successes, years 5-9, had been received as mere fantasy). So the magistrates were advised that Tom's problems stemmed from "... unrealistic demands being placed upon him both a home and at school leading to his acute sense of failure and ultimately to the shoplifting offence." The bullying, our chief concern, was not even mentioned.

Feeling that the psychiatrist should understand how certain misunderstandings had arisen, we wrote several times requesting an interview. None of our letters was answered. Undaunted, I wrote a biography of Tom's first fifteen years. Several editors, showed interest, but finally there was again rejection. Still feeling that our experience might hold useful lessons for others I looked for a new way to present the material - the result is Dear Psychiatrist.

The book opens with the first letter that we wrote to the psychiatrist following the court hearing. A second letter politely asks whether the first has been received and a third (fictitious though illustrating an important point) reveals my growing frustration not to have received a reply. This frustration is eventually relieved with the decision to write my own version of the Case History (the clear implication being that I will send it to the psychiatrist). As this history unfolds, it soon becomes clear that my perspective is strongly influenced by our experience in court, the magistrates (conveniently upgraded to a judge and two counsels) springing into frequent focus to question my account and to throw into lively debate some of the more extraordinary aspects of it.

My purpose in writing this book is to give some idea of the enormous range of opinion and advice (from exceptionally helpful and beneficial, through negative, contradictory to even harmful) that can attend a special needs child and his parents. I have also tried to show how such things as errors and prejudice which get entered into case notes can adversely affect events happening years later. However, what I most wish to do is to give some idea of the day-to-day stress that a child can feel through knowing himself to be less able than his peers, particularly if he is also the victim of ridicule and bullying. In Tom's case the loss of confidence and self-esteem that he suffered through such things checked his development far more effectively than did his handicap.