Early trauma blamed for kids becoming addicts

Many children who end up abusing drugs and alcohol experienced some sort of trauma between the ages of 0-5 but are rarely diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and are instead labelled with having some form of conduct disorder.

Dr Sharon Lambert, a lecturer at the School of Applied Psychology, University College Cork, said children who presented as “very aggressive and difficult because they don’t engage” were “more likely to get a diagnosis of conduct disorder or opposition defiant disorder (ODD)” when in fact what psychologists should be looking for was evidence of trauma in their lives.

Dr Lambert, who conducted research on the files of 93 young people using an addiction service in the Munster area, said it was obvious to her after reviewing their developmental histories and having “looked at their lives between the age of 0-5” that many had experienced significant trauma, including physical, emotional and sexual abuse. But psychologists, when diagnosing, tended to use the medical model of assigning labels such as ODD or conduct disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which Dr Lambert said “weren’t particularly beneficial to the children in question”.