Posted by Bob on September 29, 1999, at 23:37:16
In reply to Re: now what ???, posted by Dee on September 29, 1999, at 21:58:38
NAMI prefers "brain disorder" instead of "mental illness", and I find myself using disorder quite often -- I've got too much socialized ugliness tied up in "mental illness" to identify with it as something to wear on my outside, when talking with others about my condition (but the nasty voice in me does love to bring it up for a little intrapersonal torture now and then). Anyway...
Learning disabilities are generally considered to be brain disorders, not learned behaviors. All the same, LD children can be taught to get around their disabilities. One famous (in learning psychology, that is) example is how non-LD readers tend to (a) summarize what they read, (b) do self-tests on the material, (C) try to clarify what they don't understand, and (d) try to predict what will happen next in a story, and they learn to do this "spontaneously" -- they don't have to be explicitly taught to do so. Most LD children never pick up these skills on their own. All the same, they can be taught to use these skills successfully. It's not wishful thinking that makes them better readers. It's learning coping strategies that circumvent their biologically-driven shortcomings as thinkers.
The brain is an incredibly "plastic" thing. My dad had a stroke that took out his ability to read. He could speak, he could listen, he could even write with his still perfect elementary-school-teacher penmanship ... but five minutes later, he could not tell you what he had written. Still, at 65 years of age and with a few months of therapy, his brain rewired itself (without the aid of any learn-to-read medication) so that he *could* read again.
Cognitive therapy is more than wishful thinking.
Bob(not that I'd rely on it ... I think I know too much about how it works, so that nasty voice just has a field day sabotaging it ;^)
poster:Bob
thread:11902
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990914/msgs/12283.html