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Northwestern University in cooperation with the Mutual Broadcasting System presents the reviewing stand a program in its twenty first year on the air today the reviewing stand I asks How can we help the emotionally disturbed child our unrehearsed give and take discussion will consider the necessity of recognizing children who need psychiatric treatment and the best methods of dealing with the problem Mr make birdie our speakers today are Dr Fred straddle team for the Laboratory for child research in the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda Maryland Dr Peter Beattie director of the council Child Development Center York and Dr Helmer are Michael vice rector of the Institute for language disorders in children at Northwestern University and I was you know a gentleman our discussion today centers around a emotionally disturbed trial of who is this. Hour who is the emotionally disturbed child what children you talk about down so many different children who belong to this school that maybe I speak from my own experience about the the school to step children first maybe it might be this time to make long points that don't have problems does not need to be emotional and steps. That it is normal to have problems that going up means to cope with problems and not have and does all the time seem children problems to be dealing with it emotionally the stepchild problems in defeat live with further development and growth then can you speak about the emotionally disturbed child not our center yes and children with excessive femurs children living with and under the mound of occasional destructiveness children who are in your attic beyond the time that it wants to be children who are fighting the bad events as they are used to medical that mean your sis and your children this delayed speech development answer for this would be some of the children which we assigned it. Naturally are the to add this you know these children reflect a good deal of the problems of the environment and the trickle up until I can understand these disturbances and then the stand the parents of these children. What would you what would you add to that Dr Redlener Well it's not I mean I identify do with the introducing you with. The National Institute of Mental Health but that's the Maryland I pronounce that correctly but that's to Maryland. What is the national What is it in stood for that. This Institute for Mental Health is that nationwide in a safe in which is part of the Department of Health Education and Welfare and has a combination of larger community services to help the states develop programs and at the same time also has some actual plan of the facilities right in the system to there's an experimental end to sit with some of the distances and your teeth are the laboratory for for a child to search that's right not not my question was due to the dentist by some of these people we're talking about I'm glad that I mentioned the fact that up to differentiate between saying it child acts emotionally disturbed which any child under certain conditions well. And especially doing certain changes from one to the mental facing to another this is quite normal to expect it to mean need some help and that this is different from calling them deep emotional child which means that it is somewhat more serious affliction we can needs more leverage can. Bring a little bit beyond the entrained stuff. Nobody I mention here only do it by a variety of disturbances including. Just coming to a sink size States in Iraq to get fictions and then of course the youngsters who whose disturbance is not only within them but creates quite a problem to the people who have survived with them those who are acting out aggressive restless in their behoove us a bit they become a problem in school beyond the normal range of child liveliness and those who become destructive but many of those who have picked would be classified as delinquent even though that term is a little bit wide and encompasses a wide range of difficulties. And we're delighted to have my. Colleague in the schools think that Northwestern on this this program. Michael bus do that to what extent are you running into language or speech or are you hearing problems with children the sort that we're talking about here day or day McBurney a great course of my distinguished colleagues here that. Speech and language disorders occur only in children who have a considerable difficulty in adjustment. In other words minor deviations in language and speech should not be considered as indications of emotional disturbance but if youngster isn't acquiring speech. In terms of a good deal after the average child does then it might have an emotional basis that is he might have an emotional problem. Also if he isn't using his hearing in the usual sense sometimes he seems to hear it well but at other times it seems not to hear well this might be an indication of his not being able to use his his hearing because he does have some conflict and is emotionally disturbed I think there are more children with these problems and has usually been assumed. Is that what you think that the incidence of emotional disturbances of these kinds is increasing in that direction and are well I would not dare to make such a statement at the estimator there be a deal here today with our faculty of recognizing that the Stebbins is earlier secondly that people want to more for their children and if children have problems the parents pick it up and ask a day for help and don't take it for granted that when asked about the life with a good number of difficulties without getting some professional aid. Yes I think it's just start out to charts of the problems of emotional disturbances and mental illness and get some understandings off this sociological medical problem connected to this so I I personally would not know that there is at all in case of this problems today or whether this is either due to our faculty to understand it better recognize it. I think one of the things that's happening here in our society is that we are tending to these problems in earlier life in the past it was assumed that really young children didn't have emotional problems to any real extent that emotional difficulties really limited to school aged children and to adults primarily but now we are aware that emotional problems can occur very early in life and of course that increases the concern and the number of people we're dealing with. Well you know why at least in part I ask as a layman ask a question of this of this kind and it is we appear to be or at least lot of people think that we're living in a. Time of stress and strain insecurity and and tension. Certainly you certainly have that many adults seem to be seem to be laboring under such tensions not really mind over it but in my questions as to what extent does that carry over to two children I'm sure it would assure that the problems which we are find today in our society having to deal of these questions of almost physical survival with a sense of danger not only in the local community level but on the world level with questions of improvement investing conditions housing and so forth that much we have gained they're still there to mend this pressure for more complications of a fortunate this or but also to SMITH It's to the child to be taken in that still if one looks at the communities of days less pressure or societies are just going to ask that question. They had a debilitating and they industrialisation has not taken over this seems to be a certain percentage of mental illness being a sociological factor now if you speak about it it is serious at this step people to find them in all societies if you speak with a call a body of arctic I acting all the time to environmental experiences probably there is a pub with a problem of law Eve every day tensions becomes very important. I'm sure that you would have some you have if you have any data that Rachel but I'd like to come back to a question about increase and not so much eager to be sure to say I was a bigot I'm not but I can say as in most logical me on this that an unusually large number of children home schools right now could well identify as being in need of some special help some special through estates ecologically speaking with elaborate treatment and that I want facilities and really taking care of one to divvy up all those children who need it I will leave behind like history and. One of the ways in which we can emphasize the importance of the problem of emotional disturbance and mental illness however is that. I think we would agree here that there are more people occupying hospital beds for reasons of mental illness then all other hospital illnesses combined and you see what I mean now you are a man appeared to differentiate here between. Cases which I assume have some. Organic basis of one kind or another and and cases which are. Functional that are induced by by environment is there such a distinction I think this is an important distinction actually as one looks at a human being growing up that there is a body which the X. of the step insists on the bodily acts that the emotional life and the emotion and I have acts on the function of the body we know today that on continuity separated still doubt the organic disturbances the brain injured child the child he thinks the child with constitutional problems then on the one end of the scale of the other end of the scale of those people who are normally keeps but has to adjust to very serious difficulties in the family and environment and what else can a child through but if you take these difficulties it would be impossible to think that a child can go out without showing some problems in that surely she has to face all the time so therefore you see is not for children for certain children I did step because they have to adjust to understand in London's so will have the functional of the step child and you have the child with constitutional defects and you have a child with a Gannett disturbances this is what we call our diagnostic basis in the how can we have diagnose the problem and those are the the or the other one it is we had our idea of degrees of disturbances which we have to look into endless speak about the disturbance this as an interesting point because I had the feeling that for a long time people were in the delusion that if something again it is also wrong then it really gets serious then you get your schizophrenia and so for us well if nothing again it is in the picture then you're We don't have to bother too much now this does not heard that. You can't put your survey or severely disturbed children who actually bother you and are going to kill you seem to be all right. All we can find from any investigation we have nothing is wrong with the equipment and yet through. Sufficient live alone exposure to run influences run handling and run environmental settings that can produce very severe disturbances just as a bee and sometimes even undistinguishable from those well seventy bases who identifies the these are mostly disturbed. It is done in the schools directory and robbery of course done as early as possible and of course it is sometimes hard to differentiate what is the kind of a disturbing havior you get because a kid is in a given age and is beset by few problems but the sellers do it and that is an early sign of a more serious later he says the science too has a lot to be filled in that doing such an Atlanta thing to one of the valued pup and. Progress which we have made in this field is the only completion of emotional problems in children of today one would be able to speak about a childhood schizophrenia about ten years ago and with that if they had to make such a diagnosis in the first two years of life which naturally permits us to institute adequate treatment. Today or the other might pick up the emotional disturbance it's the first of our most of the new of Arctic problems in it's in a two wheeler to might have sleeping disturbances or my thesis more serious feeding difficulties and such that the parents come to then ask for help of age of one to with lete they are a few years ago the pediatrician or the pad would have felt all these are just the normal problems in growing up and you see more and more children who come to us earlier which helps us to recognise the disturbances and this is a new and very interesting in the field. Are these are the emotionally disturbed children which you've got Are they difficult children. Do they and I'm trying to get this I'm going to move on very soon because I know that you're anxious for me to give you a chance to say what can be done for the chances are the. Difficult children children who behave badly that. Those who are difficult and become quite a nuisance to the surrounding are frequently detected a little bit more but there are often a very many children where the behavior which they felt was awful pleasant and comply and in fact if an adult has a logical but children to survive it is quite happy that it is so offensive to most of them don't know also that sometimes the other comprising the over anxious mildly adjusting child remains undetected in its problems even longer than the more that actually of noxious one but on the other hand does that not mean that all children who are not problems therefore six of them live means that something like Some kids are just plain lucky and live in a head besetting and grow smoothly without too much problem to the environment there's a difference between that and they rigidly over submissives and anxiously over quiet child and those children even though they are no nuisance to but it may be even an advantage to a large family where large classrooms do need to text and they do need help just as much as those who become a nuisance to those around I think the same point is expressed in what they want to find shared between the disturbed child and the disturbing child. Now a child might be disturbing and show the problems at home and in school might be less the stepped in another child which does not disturb and is very quiet and fits the rules of the school in the home and as in a more serious that this step that it doesn't disturb is much the environment and I think this for the Yes it was an that's an interesting way of putting it. Dr Michael you find any or any close correlation between mental ability and emotional disturbance in the children you see I would say that there is no close relationship here. That the children who have. Somewhat less mental abilities than the average can sustain and have emotional problems just as well as bright children I think there's a common opinion that if a child is very bright he's likely to be emotionally disturbed and queers So I think there's no unfortunate opinion because it does not come out to be true and studies of these children. Like to say something of the opposite or some from the true sometimes find that out of Lincolns as opposed to be less intelligent I think you know both of those assumptions Yes And those again don't hold up some of my toughest customers are very smart cookies problem isn't that they don't have a very sharp appraisal left there so rounding the problem is that they use it only in battle relevant areas in their work with the adult and then don't use it very well you'd like to use it and develop them a shifting it from the other shouldn't use it develop can use to intelligence and awareness is one of the frequent issues which are made up of. Well let's talk about them let's talk about those matter of treatment right now. This question is I'm sure is hopeless in opening it up but what can we do Dr to help these you have nearly as begin about our center which is as I said before for preschool children and I don't take it for treatment at our place the organic or the step child or the mentally ill child but I have given examples before about the child he fears or with destructive behavior. Now is one that moves toward the taking of the very young child one needs to include the treatment of the environment in which the child lives one doesn't just say he has a child with a problem and I think that child but seems to have learned that the problem comes from experience and we think about problems today from a few point of the disturbance in the relationships which a child had with others which become so important to us that you have to include them get leave the child to their early life they have to add to include a treatment of their involvement or what does this mean. They have a nursery which is a part of our treatments and those of the child is with us from nine till tunes because we feel that if you just would see the child once for of one hour a week or twice or three times we could not contact the experience which a child would have out of all three so the child stays with us many hours a day and our thought our educational setting is guided by then the standing of the problem of the child so the teacher. Ties to help the child educationally to cope with the part of the child and then to think the parents both parents. And in addition the challenge if so necessary also individually so you can see that one concentrates with all tools one has available and this is a very intensive plan. Bad past experiences and more and more learn to think at least for their age. Their pleats meant for preschool children means not less things but more intensively in order to in to in order to avoid that their early bad experience really interfere with further development I think one of the things we can emphasize too is Dr Neubauer has is that the approach of psychology and psychiatry today is not one of blaming parents but of encouraging parents to become aware of the importance of their handling of their management their attitudes and so on this is one of the ways in which you can help the environment I think that second in connection with youngsters that we deal with I should like to emphasize that we too see them frequently and intensively and that is necessary and if a youngster showing signs of language problems that do we not demand that he talk and not demand that he hear because such demands simply aggravate the situation more Rather it's one of encouragement one encouraging the child to relate to his environment to adjust is the term that's used a good deal demands for improvement or behavior do not turn out to be very satisfactory. This fits interact with what I was just thinking up that a lot of what become treatment can really happen by helping the parents and the teachers for something we scream I've called First Aid in psychological situations most teachers don't have to be surgeons or anything but they're well equipped to know how to handle a body conflict situation at the moment so it doesn't get worse. And that's already in voice a lot of more serious disturbances and in a similar way I think parents and teachers can be helped much more than they have been in the past by. Learning how to what to do if the child is upset is anxious is a graphic of the of anxiety and so forth and in handling such minor outbursts right incorrectly and sceptical and without contaminating so to say the relationship or the damaging another organ in the child you didn't really do a lot of treatment and prevention now there's another level that wouldn't be enough because the child has now something that might be comparable to a minor childhood illness in the physical field then they need special treatment and many agencies set up to do that except not sufficient in quantities and numbers to cover all communities the social agencies time in the service agencies the clinics of patient clinics the guidance clinics they're frequently such services built into the schools by school counseling visiting teacher programs and so forth the children and parents can get additional attention to help them over. Childhood disease which is which most children get hit by but if it's kept in check doesn't go much beyond that and then of course there are some children are all of that work was the family is easy to talk about but it's doesn't work anymore because down the families. Or there are no family listed to take responsibilities anymore for the children of the family as for some reason or other incapacitated in the second larger the role of this to children those children then needs to be placed in institutional setting and in the last two years there has been quite an upsurge in the attempts to create small group treatment homes quote unquote in which such children are treated not only by counseling and a place but also by the way in which their whole life is to say and activity program but people do when they live with them and the roles which the adult to the foster parent or the counselor in such a setting place for the child's so that we frequently find a number of children where the advisory clinic or the patient clinic would not be adequate because the life space of those children has been badly just and disorganized so then we have to take over the whole environment in no way no such facilities increasing the amount but the amount of. Need of that different way of rain just so. In addition to the facilities that Dr Riddle has emphasized here communities now do have good. Facilities often in Child Guidance on mental hygiene and I think one of the problems in connection with this is that parents frequently do feel blameful and do not consult these facilities in time. I think one of the the needs is for us to encourage parents to feel that there's nothing bad there nothing wrong in having youngsters who have emotional problems the sooner they recognize them become aware of them and it seek the help of the agencies which now do exist I think the greater benefit will derive in this whole field I would like to add so that the facilities which we have today is far far behind the need of the people who just recognize federal state and local agencies there's more money now are located on all levels for mental health purposes but maybe one should also add here that the emotional problems. This is not just a field which concerns medicine that no cultural or social group would be able to cope with this unless the responsible professional people in the community at large which coming on help out this is a question of living this is a question of housing of employment in addition to questions of constitutions and question to maybe personality makeup and experience the teacher is as much an important part and member of the professional team which has to help emotional disturbance as the nurse on the sofa or the psychologist or psychiatrist and so forth now we are recognized as more and more and therefore there ever be a function of the functions in so called teams that no one professional known today would be able to say I can I have the answer for this now I know that you Daimler been planning a special meeting here in Chicago what group is this meeting here Dr A This is the author of SEC bracket conference the name is somewhat. Mystic but it has become a label for all those groups of people who are primarily involved in the dealing with the emotional problems of children and adults and goes to beyond the straight clinical mental hospital work with patients it is it encompasses people who were in community settings like go broke agency three creational programs camps it encompasses people who do individual therapy and treatment of children or really educational work in all sorts of further disturbances including speech reading and so forth with the compass of school people who are interested in the best design of the curriculum with what we now know of mental health in mind it encompasses secular groups to operate mental hospital wards for disturbed children or institutions for the Lincoln children and it is divided range of adults who are in some way or other profession. Involved in the handling of current defense well. I don't know as you know I some through your program of your meetings at lunch today. And I'm hardly content I confess brief reading to ask intelligent questions about it but surely a group of this kind would be. Looking at some new therapy Reka protos to these problems there must be some new interesting things on the horizon that you're discussing at these meetings would you care to indicate any of those well in my field we have a big shop now for. The school disturbances while it's a ten years ago there was a center in Boston and then eight years ago we started our center in New York the last two or three years what springs up is a place in New Orleans only. I'm sorry gentlemen but our time is up you have been listening to a transcribed Northwestern University reviewing stand discussion how can we help the emotionally disturbed child we want to thank our guests for today Helmer our Michael Buss professor of audiology School of Speech and director Institute for language disorders in children at Northwestern University Dr Peter Neubauer director of the council Child Development Center in New York City and the French laboratory of child research National Institute of Mental Health but that's the Maryland. Next week the reviewing stand will ask can we keep our schools free our guests will be earnest all melty dean of the Department of Education New York University Joe Park professor of education and Chairman Committee on general education at Northwestern University and Don C. Rob G.'s a system superintendent Chicago elementary schools we hope you will join us next week for our discussion and we keep our schools free the Northwestern University revealing stand as broadcast coast to coast every week as a public service feature of mutual or announcer Harry Christian this is mutual The radio network for America.