Just a few news links I felt were worthwhile to share.
LDAQ Workshop Pushes for Earlier Diagnosis
It's not news to anyone that LD assessments and diagnosis typically do not happen in most boards until around the third grade or beyond. There has been a push for earlier identification in Ontario but this has more to do with skill set evaluations as opposed to formal LD type diagnosis. It is not surprising to me that identification has been pushed out of the earliest years of education. This is of course a problem as the longer it takes for a child's educational and learning style to be profiled the more likely they will have fallen behind, and the further they will have fallen. When these children are directed towards slower paced programming it is certainly going to lead to life long problems if they are already three to five years behind.
An address at the Learning Disability Association of Quebec's annual conference (a much more assessment oriented conference than you'll find at LDAO) this week suggested that we need to move identification to the pre-school level. The time may really have come for this in Canada. I suspect that a great deal of the influence towards a later identification model of LD had to do with the somewhat archaic ability-achievement discrepancy approach. The sensitivity of these discrepancies are muddy a bit if there is very little academic experience and expectations in place to have a discrepant weakness in. As we move to a more inclusive and appropriate model of learning disabilities, including information processing deficits, phonological processing, and executive functioning we can certainly expect a better ability to appropriately and accurately identify at an earlier age (since many of these constructs are more stable outside of academic exposure). What do you think? Time to dust off your WPPSI-III and DAS!
CLICK HERE to read a very brief note from the Montreal Gazette on this.
Assessment & Treatment of Children From Diverse Ethnic Backgrounds
Psychiatric Times posted an entire article online this week exploring this issue in the United States. The article is from 2003 (not sure why it was listed as breaking news) but is an interesting read discussing cultural variations in the presentation of conduct disorder, ADHD, and bipolar disorder in children. Some symptom variations were present, but interestingly this seems to be due in part to reporting. They noted that some negative behaviours were not reported upon in minority youth as they were seen as more normal. They also noted that the minority youth were far less likely to be treated through medication. This may be due socio-economic status or other factors. In the end it is worth skimming through. CLICK HERE to view the full article.
