ABSTRACT
Helpers can support both their clients and their clients’ children by providing clients with a better understanding of their parenting options and the resources available to them. They can likewise advocate both for their clients, who may feel pressured to accept the mental disorder paradigm, and for their clients’ children, whose distress is likely to put them at risk of a mental disorder diagnosis and a chemical fix. Without a humane helper’s guidance, it can prove very hard for parents not to believe that something like medicine is going on when their child is diagnosed and prescribed psychiatric medication, since the analogy between “physical disorder” and “mental disorder” is a powerful one and since medical doctors are engaged in the diagnosing and the prescribing. Helpers can foster a better understanding of the existential challenges that their clients and their clients’ children are facing by explaining certain key concepts.
