Exclusive: Brain Damage vs. RAD
Our deepest thanks to Thais Tepper for contacting us and sharing the following important information with us and our readers. We will add this to a pdf on our resource page as well.
“The reason I exited the world of International adoption advocacy is that nothing has changed since I cofounded the Parent Network for the Post Institutionalized Child in 1993. I was involved in the Rene Polreis case in Colorado, the first recorded death of a Russian adoptee and an even earlier case in Florida, in which Romanian adoptee died of malnutrition (this was ruled a death by natural causes???). The entire issue resurfaces every time another Russian adoptee ends up dead.
RAD is a fad diagnosis. It needs to be sparingly as an excuse for antisocial behavior and the truth about brain damage accepted. I am sick and tired of reading the RAD groups talking about RAD kids There is ample scientific evidence that isolation, emotional deprivation and abuse in institutional settings causes brain damage. Add to that prenatal alcohol exposure as another proven cause of prefrontal brain damage . People are adopting children with BRAIN DAMAGE, pure and simple. Most people who write about RAD don’t get NIH and NIMH grants at major universities. Some of them publish their own RAD books. When you understand the process of peer review research and scientific journal publication, you understand the difference between books on RAD and articles that can be accessed on PubMED. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to find the research, just use these key words ” childhood deprivation or childhood maltreatment and prefrontal brain development and antisocial behavior. I use PubMed for all my searches.
Look RAD troopers, Dr Charles Nelson went directly INTO Romanian orphanages and studied brain development
http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2012/07/brain-changes-orphanage
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/07/17/1200041109
Read the research conducted specifically on post institutional children
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2731940/
http://www.pediatricsdigest.mobi/content/117/6/2093.full
http://phy.ucsf.edu/~houde/coleman/chugani.pdf
http://www.globalchilddevelopment.com/sites/all/pdf/brain%20adoptionrutter.pdf
I would also add to the list of must read, anything on prefrontal brain injury and amoral behavior by Antonio Dimasio.
http://www.autismwebsite.com/crimetimes/00a/w00ap4.htm
And all the research on childhood maltreatment and brain envelopment by Michael DeBellis
http://www.nctsnet.org/nctsn_assets/Articles/5.pdf
http://www.ocfcpacourts.us/assets/files/list-758/file-937.pdf
Adrain Raine, a noted researcher in the investigation of violent offenders, brain abnormalities and early deprivation
http://faculty.vassar.edu/abbaird/resources/juvenile_justice/pdfs/Raine_deprivation.pdf
The social deprivation of being raised in an orphanage causes the brain to be wired in an abnormal pattern. Imagine a child’s brain is constructed like a PC operating Windows 95 and the entire world is running Window 8. RAD has become a diagnosis based on psychological mumbo jumbo and not on actual structural impairment of the brain. I’m happy that no one from the news media called me for a statement on the Shatto case, because I would have said that the RAD groups are as credible as Scientologists or the Westboro Baptist Church protesters.
Thais Tepper
former founder of
Parent Network for the Post Institutionalized Child”
Thank you for this post and credible links. The RAD troopers cannot even keep their stories straight. Their theories keep changing to suit their needs. Child has behavioral issues, it’s always RAD.
And for some reason this exonerates them from abusing the children.
Where are the agencies in all of this? Why isn’t this information a part of pre-adoption education prep that is demanded by the Hague?
I’m glad that Thais Tepper contacted you. For years she was the lone voice speaking out about post-institutionalization issues, giving a reality check when one was NOT available.
The links she provides are valuable. There is alot of information – information people adopting a child from an institution NEED to know.
So is there a reason this brain damage (which I completely agree with) can’t have a NAME, like RAD? It is a disorder of the brain. The brain, in it’s early development, was not ordered correctly as it would have been if raised in a normal, nurturing family environment. Instead it was DISORDERED, a REACTION to lack of stimulation, love and nurturing. I would say of my two adopted sons, both have some level of damage done from the environments they were raised in. It is what it is. We adopted them knowing this would likely be the case. We prepared to live with these children in whatever way they came to us. My sister had four adopted kids (a sib group) who all had some level of involvement, one of them being very dangerous. Oh, they were adopted domestically from CA foster care. All have FAS or FAE, not to mention the attachment issues. (they were adopted in 1998 before anyone was talking about attachment problems.)
Brain damage can cause many conditions. RAD is a rare one and the point is that RAD diagnosis is thrown around very quickly with some people and even used a first diagnosis before more common things have been ruled out.This leads to therapies that may be dangerous to the child or replace other therapies that may have helped.
Posts that discuss differences of mental health conditions:
PTSD is often overlooked or confused with RAD https://reformtalk.net/2011/09/08/lets-get-real-adoptive-parenting-and-ptsd/
or Developmental trauma as well https://reformtalk.net/2012/06/28/resource-adhd-vs-ptsd-vs-dtd/
Also, this is my favorite chart that looks at overlapping symptoms of mental health conditions common in adoptees http://www.toolboxparent.com/Tools/graphics/Overlapping_Characteristics.pdf and specifically look at “difficulty with relationships” trait to see how many conditions other than RAD that this could be. Note that FASD has ALL of the traits.
Expectations and which therapies chosen are the key issues with mislabeling someone with RAD when it is something else.
And a question I have asked other commenters in the past: What is a normal path to attach to a new adoptive or foster parent?
Name:
It’s been my exerpeince that attachment issues, PTDS, RAD, brain damage – whatever term we are using here to describe the mental disorders (for lack of a better term) which adoptees and AParents face together – are NOT exclusive to I.A. kids or domesticly adopted children.
The issues your sister faced with her children are the same as issues one would find in I.A. kids. That’s one of the isses that gets overlooked when we discuss post-adoption mental disorders. “It’s ALL THOSE kids from OVER THERE who have THOSE issues.” Or “It’s ALL THOSE kids from FOSTER CARE/Domestic adoption who have THOSE issues.” No – it’s both.
Boy, if you adopted before 1998, you were in the “just food, love and good medical attention” zone of Happily Ever land. What did you do for your children, if I may ask.
Unfortunately, pre 2000 – about the time we adopted our son from Bulgaria – it was all mostly AParents LYING to one another about their children. The first email exchange would be how great the kids were doing. The second, third and forth emails were “Oh yeah, the RAD, the PTSD, the other things we’re having him/her treated for…”
Did you live through that too?
I agree. It seems like if one of my bio children displays a behavior they are going through a stage, but if our son, who we adopted 2 years ago, displays the same behavior everyone wants to say it’s attachment related. I’ve seen women label each others children with RAD & PTSD…”oh, that sounds like PTSD!”, “yes, your right, it has to be it!!” . Have any of you heard of or read the book “Parenting the Difficult Child: A Biblical Perspective of RAD”? I agree with Thias as it does seem that RAD is a fad diagnosis and more and more children are being labeled with it.
Rally: I read a book by Daniel Goleman called “Social Intelligence, the New Science of Human Relationships”. It’s not the best book, but still, an intelligent read. I was struck by something he wrote about regarding the hormone oxytocin and birth.
A quick overview here:
http://health.ninemsn.com/pregnancy/labourandbirth/695097/oxytocin-the-hormone-of-love-and-birth
Oxytocin: the facts
Oxytocin is released from the posterior pituitary gland located in the brain. Both women and men release it during lovemaking. Oxytocin also triggers and regulates contractions during labour and birth and enables milk to be let down and ejected during breastfeeding. After the birth the level of oxytocin can be higher than during labour. This is protective because it makes sure the uterus squeezes down, stopping bleeding after birth and expelling the placenta and membranes. It also helps connect us to our beautiful wide-eyed babies.
It struck me, after reading what Daniel Goleman wrote and reading a bit more about oxytocin and birth, that when you adopt YOU ARE NOT IN LABOR. There IS no hormonal bond rush towards the child during an adoption. The child you are adopting isn’t being born. The child and you are strangers to one another.
IMO we focus on the child when we adopt them. What isses does the child have? How am I going to help this child? Nobody talks about if you and the child just don’t like eachother. It happens.
A good start would be understanding our own attachment ideals and separate our own upbringing from that of a child who may come physically, emotionally and mentally from a “different” place then ourselves. Start with the self and go from there – just a thought.