Lynne Scalia, Ed.D.

Last week the New York Times published an alarming, but not surprising piece on the uptick of psychiatric diagnoses in youth. The essay is by Jia Lynn Yang, America’s Children Are Unwell. Are Schools Part of the Problem?  Some of the stats the author lays out are:

• Nearly 1 in 4 boys aged 17-years bear an ADHD diagnosis. This is 1 million more in 2022 than in 2016.
• In the early 80’s 1 in 2500 children had an autism diagnosis. It is now one in 31.
• Nearly 32% of teens have been diagnosed at some point with anxiety; the median age of “onset” is 6 years old.

Even preschool tends to look more like early elementary as children are expected to sit and focus on academic material for longer periods. The essay understandably points to the need to fix schools, not necessarily kids. Today, even real estate listings rate schools, with “test scores as proxies for profits.”

Yang does a creditable job of describing untenable choices for parents. If a child has a psychiatric diagnosis, a school is “forced” to attempt to make adaptations.  In some states, as many as 21% of students qualify for a plethora of accommodations so that they might “fit in.”  For anyone who has spent much time in a classroom in an underfunded and understaffed public school, one knows the madness of this exercise.

As an educator and educational leader, and I would challenge, as a psychoanalyst activist, while we are willing to take up the work that is needed to assist the individual child or family, it is also necessary to see that which is not easily seen or solved. This is the unconscious of the institution, which is enveloped and protected by a culture that would decry the unknowing violence it inflicts or perpetuates.