Word: fassler
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...specifically for kids. The majority have been okayed for adults only, but are being used "off label" for younger and younger patients at children's menu doses. The practice is common and perfectly legal but potentially risky. "We know that kids are not just little adults," says Dr. David Fassler, professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont. "They metabolize medications differently...
...children raised by nudists. Growing Up Without Shame concluded, rather expansively, that "the viewing of the unclothed human body, far from being destructive to the psyche, seems to be either benign or to actually provide benefits"--typically indifference to such inevitabilities as puberty, sags and wrinkles. Dr. David Fassler, a fellow of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, says such claims haven't been validated by independent psychiatric researchers. But a visit to the camp yielded anecdotal support. An 11-year-old girl described--in disarming detail--how she was prepared for her breasts to grow and menstruation...
Children who have been traumatized in this way can begin to come to terms with their psychic wounds, but Fassler warns that it's not easy. The first rule, he stresses, is not to push things. "We used to feel we had to rush in and have kids report everything that happened right away," he says. "Now we feel it's best to let them tell the story when they're ready, at their own pace." This, he concedes, often puts doctors at odds with law-enforcement officials, who tend to need as much information as they...
When the child is ready to open up, treatment may have several components, including individual therapy, counseling in school and especially family counseling. "All of the relationships in the family change after a kidnapping," Fassler says. "There's a desire to pick up where things stopped, but you can't do that. You've missed out on a significant period of time in each other's lives. Relationships among the siblings and even between the parents may change as a result of the experience...
...that recovery may never be truly complete. Years after an abduction, children and adults report that certain places or images may call up traumatic memories of the event, signs of a deep emotional shift that never wholly resolves itself. "It doesn't mean you can't go on," says Fassler, "but there are scars." The Smart family was still basking in the joy of their reunion last week. There will be time enough to tend to their wounds. --By Jeffrey Kluger