Psychologist Knows No Pill to Make Kids Whole

By the time the 16-year-old boy stepped into the Lake Forest office of psychologist Bunni Tobias, he had been taking Ritalin for eight years.

No one had ever questioned his diagnosis--attention deficit hyperactivity disorder--or his prescribed treatment.

Both were wrong.

“His parents didn’t know that his problems could be caused by something else,” said Tobias, a 55-year-old educational psychologist with more than 30 years’ experience in public education as a teacher, counselor and school psychologist.

After putting the teenager through a number of assessment tests in consultation with a physician, Tobias found he was suffering from an anxiety disorder and a learning disability involving the way his brain processed visual information. He did not have ADHD.

“He had eight years of this drug in his body that did not change anything. He told me that he felt like the victim of a prescription. The drug only postponed and compounded his problems. He’s off Ritalin now, and we’re working on behaviors and on his family relationship--which has dramatically improved. He’s turning in all his homework and his grades are coming up.”

His example is all too common, Tobias said. The number of children diagnosed as suffering from ADHD has more than doubled in the United States since 1990. Some studies have reported that hyperactivity affects from 2% to 4% of all school-age children. But Tobias believes the diagnosis has become a catch-all for what is often a more complex combination of problems.

“My initial wake-up call came from a well-known pediatric neurologist in the area who called me one day out of a sense of frustration. She was livid. She said, ‘You’ve got to tell these parents, and also my colleagues, that you don’t just give a kid a pill if he can’t sit still.’

“We live in a quick-fix society, which is why Ritalin has become so popular. And now I’m getting call after call about children being recommended to take Prozac. Some of these kids are 6, 7 and 8 years old. This is frightening to me.”

Helping children unravel their problems is a calling that came early in life to Tobias. As a young girl, she cared for her mentally disabled cousin. During her college years, she taught blind children how to swim and taught music appreciation to deaf youngsters. After graduation, she worked with disabled children whose mothers had taken Thalidomide, a medication for morning sickness prescribed to thousands of pregnant women in the 1950s that was later linked to severe birth defects.

In 1974, a divorce left her the single mother of two young children. But she pushed herself to earn a master’s degree and a doctorate in psychology, while usually working two jobs to support her family.

She spent 14 years working with disabled children in the Saddleback Valley Unified School District before leaving to start her own private practice.

“It gave me an opportunity to follow my curiosity and learn. Each child teaches me something.

“People would ask me, ‘Why aren’t you depressed?’ And I would say, ‘There are opportunities in every child’s life. Sometimes they happen in quantum leaps and sometimes it’s like watching grass grow, but something is always happening.’ It wasn’t just a job with me; it wasn’t just a way to earn a living; it was something I really wanted to do. And the more complicated it got, the more excited I got. I loved it.”

But with an average caseload of 2,600 children and limited school district funding, Tobias wanted to do more.

“I wanted to work with the pediatricians, the family doctors, the speech and language therapists, the sensory integration therapists and people who were working with allergy and nutrition, because we’re talking about a whole person here.”

In her private practice, Tobias says many of the children she sees are fractured by the pace of modern living, which can compound learning disorders and emotional problems. And too often, she said, a pill becomes the treatment of choice.

“It’s becoming very acceptable to leave kids in day care all day long, and children are not getting that cherished feeling. They do not feel secure. I’m not against working parents--I was one--but it’s becoming so acceptable. A lot of parents forget that these children need arms to hold them and a place they can feel safe. A lot of the anger in these kids as they grow up comes from a lack of connection.

“Children are our most valuable national resource, but they are being very overlooked. Too many kids today are saying, ‘Why live? Why go on? Why plan for the future?’ There’s a sense of hopelessness. But if children can have somebody in their corner--just one person--then there’s hope.”

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Profile: Bunni Tobias

Age: 55

Hometown: Port Chester, N.Y.

Residence: Lake Forest

Family: Three grown children

Education: Bachelor’s degree in early childhood education, State University of New York at Buffalo; master’s degree in educational psychology, Cal State Long Beach; PhD in human behavior and counseling psychology, Newport University; graduate studies at UCI and Chapman University

Background: More than 30 years in public education as a teacher, counselor and school psychologist; worked in public education with disabled and gifted students; in private practice since 1992, assessing children with learning and developmental disabilities and behavior problems; adjunct professor in graduate school of special education at National University; author and producer of educational materials

On kids’ perceptions: “Kids today do not see enough success happening around them. They see a great deal of drugs, divorce, people losing their jobs, murders--just turn on the 6 o’clock news. The world is very frightening for children.”

Source: Bunni Tobias; Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times