Mental Illness and Children

Last month I had a chance to attend a Mental Illness Awareness Conference hosted at Collin College. One of the guest speakers was Dr. Baer Ackerman, a renowned child and adolescent psychiatrist in Dallas. Dr. Ackerman shared about the importance of relationships between parents and children.

The parents of a young boy who was described as “all over the place” came in to see Dr. Ackerman. The mother was a housewife and the father a top corporate executive who made lots of money. When the psychiatrist would ask a question, the mother had all the answers. However, when asked, the boy’s father gave the same responses each time, “I don’t know, I’m never around.”

After the session, the man confessed to his wife that he felt ashamed that he didn’t know the answers to the simplest inquiries about his own son because he was always working and never home. Shamefaced, he came in to work the next day and asked for a demotion.

Over the course of the next few weeks, the boy stopped his disruptive behavior and eventually was fine.

Obviously, this doesn’t happen in every instance of children being cured of behavior/acting-out problems just by having their dads spend more time with them. But what this wonderful and encouraging story does say is that no matter how advanced our society becomes, no matter how much money a parent makes, no matter how effective the medication, nothing can replace the innate bond and the yearning for that connection that a child has for his mother and father.