Sorting out the muddle between psychiatric diagnosis and trauma (children and teenagers)

Many children and young people who have suffered traumatic life experience are given a psychiatric label and sometimes medication, without anyone ever asking what has happened to them in their lives or hearing their story. Being wrongly diagnosed, can then result in yet more suffering as they now have a label that is incorrect, and their trauma remains unhealed. So, in this webinar, Dr Sunderland will look at how easy it can be to mistake the behavioural, relational and emotional manifestations of trauma, with attention deficit hyperactivity or autism spectrum diagnoses.

Moving case material will be used to illustrate when such a misdiagnosis has taken place and how it can have been avoided. Dr Sunderland will also speak of the allure of giving children a diagnosis as it’s easy to ‘spot symptoms’ but this so often fails to look at the wider context of children’s’ lives and the social causes of emotional distress. She will explore how some professionals think in terms of the language of disorders rather than being curious about and considering how children may have been betrayed, abused, neglected, terrified, and/or experienced inter-generational trauma. The webinar is informed by cutting edge neuroscientific research.

Dr Margot Sunderland

Director of Education and Training at The Centre for Child Mental Health, Director of Innovation and Research Trauma Informed Schools UK, Honorary Visiting Fellow at London Metropolitan University and Child Psychotherapist with over thirty years’ experience of working with children and families.

Trained initially in Child psychotherapy with John Hood Williams (former Principal - Institute of Child Psychology - Lowenfeld training). Worked for years as a child and adolescent psychotherapist in children’s homes and adolescent units.

Author of over twenty books in the field of child mental health, which collectively have been translated into eighteen languages and published in twenty-four countries. Internationally acclaimed book, “The Science of Parenting” (Dorling Kindersley), won First Prize in the British Medical Association Medical Book awards 2007 Popular Medicine section. Dr Sunderland has two doctorates, one in child psychotherapy, thesis entitled “The Application of Art and Science to the Psychological Treatment of Children.”