In schools, the stigma facing children with mental disorders like ADHD are even worse than what adult with mental disorders face. Such children are often punished more often than the average student and nobody takes time to understand why they are the way they are. They are also likely to perform below expectation and are sometimes forced to repeat classes or to drop subjects that they could have excelled in because of poor grades. There is no rule in most countries in developing world that requires parents and schools to test the mental state of children before classifying them as indiscipline.

The tragedy with mental illness is that there is a very thin line between having poor mental health and being badly behaved or behaving out of the norm. I once tried to get a parent whose child was manifesting symptoms of ADHD to take her to a psychiatrist for proper assessment. She told me clearly that if it was proven that her daughter had a mental illness; she would rather kill her than be stigmatized for having given birth to a ‘mad’ child. Yet, she was forever quarrelling with her daughter about financial mismanagement, not being serious with academic work and living a reckless lifestyle. Proper diagnosis and management of ADHD would have changed the quality of that girl’s life and entirely given the mother-daughter relationship a new lease of life.

It is clear that personality disorders such as promiscuity, poor financial management and constantly living beyond one’s means, inability to sustain relationships and ending up with a string of broken relationships are more manifestations of mental disorders than personality problems.

Others such as teenage suicide/careless lifestyles and irresponsible and violent behaviour: many of the young people cutting down lives with their guns are either victims of undiagnosed mental disorders or grew up in homes or environments that harmed their mental well-being. Diagnosis and treatment would save their lives and those of their victims.

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When her conditions worsened, she became very aggressive and would often get into quarrels and fights with her siblings, especially her younger brother. She would become very wild when we would make efforts to stop the fights. She became impossible to handle, and would refuse to do whatever we said, whether it was right or wrong. She would speak to us in a harsh manner and give us - her parents – a piece of her mind. Any effort to correct her would be met with hostility and threats, threats about running away from home or harming somebody. She would sometimes get so angry that she would throw missiles such as shoes at us, and some few times the missiles hit their targets and we got hurt. Her elder sister had made the transition from childhood to adolescence without much ado, and the whole experience was entirely new to us.

We were advised to take her to counsellors and many identified many causes to the problems including our weak discipline, a curse from our parents and so on. This did not help despite our efforts but only led her to further depression and suicidal tendencies. We could not understand why she was suicidal, yet there was nothing significant that could justify that. Once she was unable to cope in the school that we had taken her to, we got her transferred to a new school, which she actually chose for herself. We did everything we knew how to make her comfortable. She did not really have any reason to be unhappy, yet she was depressed and suicidal. Talk of suicide often left her lips, claiming that life was not worth living and she would be better off dead.

We often used to ask ourselves, how else could we love her? What have we given our other children that we have failed to give her? We would ask her those questions and she would start crying and have no satisfactory answer to give us. She would feel unloved and unvalued regardless of what we did. I still remember the small notes she used to write to me at that very difficult time in our relationship. “Thank you for what you have done for me in my life. I will always cling to you. I’ll never again do what I have done today. I’m really sorry for breaking your heart. There is no other mom like you. I’ll never repeat what I’ve done. I love you mom. Please, please forgive me….”

Sooner or later, she would still do something that would devastate our relationship. Then she would write again; “I know you are angry at me, but that doesn’t stop me from being your daughter. That will never change. What I am thinking is about how I am and how I behave. I might be having … a mental illness, and you do not know. I know you have tried everything but in vain. Can u try a check-up before it is too late? You know that when I was in Class 2 I fell down with my head. … Can you do something now before it is too late? Please don’t think I am foolish by saying this, I mean it. Remember, I still love you …”