families

I’d just like to draw attention to a comment made by Cockroach Catcher in a previous post, in which he says of his background in child psychiatry:

At least a third of the children we saw were not the real patients.

I’m currently a CPN operating out of an outpatient clinic for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). Cockroach Catcher’s comment intrigued me, so I decided to do a bit of a straw poll of 15 kids seen in our clinic over the past couple of weeks. For these 15 kids, I asked myself, “Who’s the real patient?”
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They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

- Philip Larkin

In our recent thread, On the Borderline, DeeDee Ramona made the comment that, “Sadly, from what I have seen, what would work best for a lot of young patients is a parent-ectomy.”

Let me introduce you to a prime example. He’s called David and he’s 14 years old.
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