Pitfalls in the psychoeducational assessment of adolescents with learning and school adjustment problems.
Over the past decade there has been a growing interest on the part of educators, medical specialists, mental health personnel, and the lay public in the diagnosis, evaluation, and remediation of specific learning disabilities in the school-age child. This paper attempts to show through case illustrations of five high school-age adolescents how parents can seek from clinical evaluators a diagnostic impression of primary learning disability for their nonlearning disabled children; how this otherwise legitimate diagnostic category can be inappropriately used in the service of denying the salient individual, emotional, and family system factors at work in the school-related difficulties; and how the label of learning disability can work as a formidable resistance on the part of the family when, following comprehensive, in-depth assessment, professional recommendations focus less on specific educational remediation and more on the need for individual or family psychotherapy. Suggestions are made for dealing with this clinical issue.
D000124:Achievement; D000293:Adolescent; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D004519:Education, Special; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007859:Learning Disabilities / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D012017:Referral and Consultation; D012649:Self Concept; D012917:Social Adjustment