Katherine S. Johnson - Draper

Deseretnews.com Salt Lake City, Utah

Learn About Hyperactivity

In your Family Section on Nov. 15, there was a column written by Judy Lyden. It was titled "Wrong diagnosis." I have a clinical license to practice psychotherapy and have extensive experience working with children and adults who experience hyperactivity.

I wonder what Judy's credentials are that allow her to diagnose children as having "personality problems" and not physical ones?

I agree hyperactivity is over-diagnosed. However, to suggest that all children diagnosed as hyperactive are misdiagnosed is a disservice to them and their families. Without appropriate treatment these children grow up with feelings of low self-esteem and often develop conduct disorders. It's time Judy went to school and learned more about this disorder.

Kathryn S. Johnson- Draper


My Response:

This letter was published a while back. Too bad they didn’t send it to me. I LOVE personal attacks like this. It makes my day. I love the one-ups-man-ship and the tone. The disregarding, condecending tone makes me giggle. My first mental response actually meets her on her own level, Look, lady, I’m not the one making the big bucks on these kids.

But it goes a lot deeper than that. Once upon a time, I received a whole big How To binder from a psychotherapist who liked my work and lent it to me because he agreed that hyperactive children were being treated for a disease that doesn’t exist. It was a trumped up money maker, said he, and in the binder labeled, How to Set up a Psychotherapeutic Center, it said Never turn away a child suspected of hyperactivity. He’s your bread and butter.

The binder was full of tests, and ways to manage an office, and a lot of helpful strategies on this illness and that mental problem. It was at that point I lost most of my respect for psychotherapists. It seemed like a scam that not only drains parents’ pocketbooks but the state resources we all pay for. And the only one reaping the rewards is the lady with the boat and the new car and the $1,000,000.00 house. You can bet the child will never be cured of this illness.

Here’s a credential for you: I am hyperactive and I’ve reared four productive hyperactives. You can’t find better more interesting, productive, energetic, on target kids than mine.

Here’s another: For over a quarter of a century I’ve picked up targeted hyperactives out of the dustbin of ridicule and disdain put there by psycho-therapists. (I always take issue with that title.)

I’ve loved these throw away kids just as they are; just as God made them. I’ve spent a life time of care re-teaching them how to live in the world, and my success rate doesn’t come out of an expensive bottle. It comes out of two hearts – theirs and mine.

Do I have an education? You bet, Summa Cum Laude, first in my class, and aces in graduate school as well, but more than that, I’m educated enough to know a fraud when I hear it. I’m educated enough to understand you can’t diagnose a personality type or medicate one you don’t like or can’t keep up with. I think that way because I do something remarkable; I actually read books.

Let’s medicate some of the hyperactives from the past and get a good laugh:

Theodore Roosevelt
Lewis and Clark
Christopher Columbus
Johnny Appleseed
Daniel Boone
Davy Crocket
Thomas Jefferson
St. Paul
Alexander the Great


And the beat goes on.