Over the past sixty years, we’ve witnessed a phenomenal growth in the number of new psychiatric illnesses.  The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, first published in 1952, originally listed about 100 categories of illness.  By the year 2000, that number had tripled.  We’ve become accustomed to hearing in the news about “learning disabilities,”...Read More

In response to news reports that it may be possible in the future to “cure” Down syndrome by intervening early in development using psychoactive medication, Jenn Power, the mother of identical twins with Down syndrome, responded on the blog Contrarian: “As you know, I have many years of history supporting people with intellectual disabilities. Through...Read More

Researchers at Stanford Medical School have demonstrated that children of bipolar parents score higher on a non-verbal creativity test than children of “healthy” parents.  The study compared creativity scores of 40 bipolar parents and 40 offspring (half of whom had bipolar disorder and the other half of whom had ADHD), with 18 healthy adults and 18 healthy...Read More

This essay of mine originally appeared in the New Horizons in Education online journal in 2009. The history of special education in the United States is a dramatic one. Without going into the whole legislative history, suffice it to say that during the 1970’s, due in large part to increasing scientific involvement in special needs...Read More