The Action Alliance on Basic Education yesterday urged the government to stop using the terms “psychiatric disorder” and “mental illness,” and instead use the term “neurodiversity” to make children and parents more willing to seek treatment.
Changing the terminology could increase the number of children willing to be treated from 2.8 percent to 15 percent within three years, it said.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare should work with the Ministry of Education to remove inappropriate terminology from the medical, education and welfare sectors, alliance president Wang Han-yang (王瀚陽) said.
Photo: Yang Mien-chieh, Taipei Times
One in four children aged eight to 15 have experienced psychiatric disorders within the past six months, but only one-tenth of them are receiving medical care or support services, the group said.
Although the prevalence rate of children in the age group with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is 10 percent, only 2 percent have been diagnosed, and only 1 percent have been treated, it said, adding that the discrepancy was concerning.
Many parents and educators lack a general understanding of ADHD and other neurodevelopmental differences, and some parents refuse to seek medical treatment for fear that their children would be seen as different, Wang said.
Citing health ministry statistics, Wang said that more than 20 percent of children who have experienced domestic abuse have ADHD, delayed development or other neurodevelopmental issues, adding that children with these differences have been misunderstood as showing willful disobedience.
The use of corporal punishment only feeds a vicious cycle, he said.
To increase people’s willingness to seek medical treatment, the government should facilitate collaboration between hospitals and welfare facilities to launch adolescent physical and psychiatric health evaluations, he said.
The government needs to increase the amount of resources allotted to hospitals and the number of mental professionals to provide effective treatment, or to ensure that symptoms are detected early to refer affected people to capable facilities, Wang said.
Taiwan used to refer to dementia as “lao ren chi dai” (老人癡呆, literally “older people’s dull-wittedness”), but that is no longer used as it was considered disrespectful toward older people, Far Eastern Memorial Hospital Department of Neurology doctor Yan Sui-hing (任瑞興) said.
Japan and Hong Kong have also changed the names of conditions to make them more neutral, Yan said.
Parents do not want their children to be referred to as hyperactive, a recluse or as having psychiatric disorders, he said, adding that resentment toward the use of such names makes parents unwilling to take their children to be diagnosed or treated.
Fast food chain McDonald's is to raise prices by up to NT$5 on some products at its restaurants across Taiwan, starting on Wednesday next week, the company announced today. The prices of all extra value meals and sharing boxes are to increase by NT$5, while breakfast combos and creamy corn soup would go up by NT$3, the company said in a statement. The price of the main items of those meals, if ordered individually, would remain the same. Meanwhile, the price of a medium-sized lemon iced tea and hot cappuccino would rise by NT$3, extra dipping sauces for chicken nuggets would go up
Yangmingshan National Park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) nature area has gone viral after a park livestream camera observed a couple in the throes of intimate congress, which was broadcast live on YouTube, drawing large late-night crowds and sparking a backlash over noise, bright lights and disruption to wildlife habitat. The area’s livestream footage appeared to show a couple engaging in sexual activity on a picnic table in the park on Friday last week, with the uncensored footage streamed publicly online. The footage quickly spread across social media, prompting a tide of visitors to travel to the site to “check in” and recreate the
GROUNDED: A KMT lawmaker proposed eliminating drone development programs and freezing funding for counterdrone systems, despite China’s adoption of the technology China has deployed attack drones at air bases near the Taiwan Strait in a strategy aimed at overwhelming Taiwan’s air defense systems through saturation attacks, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. The council’s latest quarterly report on China said that satellite imagery and open-source intelligence indicate that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had converted retired J-6 fighter jets into J-6W drones, which the PLA has stationed at six air bases near Taiwan, five in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province. The report cited J. Michael Dahm, a senior fellow at the US-based Mitchell Institute, as saying that China has
Carrefour Taiwan is to begin using a new name from the start of July, but it cannot divulge the name until then, the chairman of the supermarket chain's parent company said today. President Chain Store Co chairman Lo Chih-hsien (羅智先) was asked by reporters after a shareholders' meeting to confirm whether the company has settled on a new name for the supermarket brand. In March, the government-registered name of two Carrefour Taiwan branches was quietly changed to "Le Chia Kang" (樂家康) in Chinese, raising speculation that has been selected as the name. Lo said that because of local regulations and contractual obligations, the
RSS