'Mental Health Mom' Wages Battle After Sons Are Misdiagnosed

THE WOODLANDS, TX -- A Woodlands woman dubbed “the Mental Health Mom” is on a crusade to ensure children with mental health issues receive the right care after learning her two adopted sons were misdiagnosed.

Since her adopted sons were little, Dawn Kuhn has devoted herself to learning as much as she could about bipolar and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity (ADHD) disorders. Following the advice of doctors, she took the children to their appointed therapy appointments and put them on a medication regimen. The biological brothers were born to a drug-addicted mother with a long family history of mental health issues, Kuhn learned.

The oldest son came to the Kuhn household when he was just 15 months old after having lived in five different foster homes, while his brother came to the home as a newborn, Kuhn said.

As the boys grew, Kuhn and her husband noticed they were undergoing changes. At 7 years old, the oldest boy exhibited violent tendencies and experienced hallucinations, while her younger son was extremely hyperactive.

Kuhn and her husband decided to take the boys for a psychiatric examination, which primarily consisted of the doctor asking questions about their children’s behavior. Based on those answers, the test revealed the oldest son son was bipolar while the youngest had ADHD with signs of high-functioning autism.

Kuhn and her husband were crushed at the medical diagnosis.

“It was gut-wrenching,” Kuhn told Patch. “Nobody wants to medicate a 6- and 7-year-old with an anti psychotic or mood stabilizer. These are monster mega drugs.”

The boys received regular medications for five years, but Kunn noticed something just didn’t seem right with the treatment.

“It just ate us alive feeling like there was something we were missing, like there was something else going on,” she said.

Kuhn blogged about her experiences with the boys on her Facebook Page and webpage, both of which have since drawn a considerable following.

Kuhn was watching the Dr. Phil Show one afternoon when she learned about a clinic in Dallas called the Psycho Neuro Plasticity Center, or PNP Center, which she believed would help determine if her children were misdiagnosed.

She called the center and began the screening process. The PNP Center rejected Kuhn's request at first because of her oldest son’s violent hallucinations, but after a three-hour phone interview and a five-month wait, they were given an appointment.

The family traveled to Dallas in May, where the boys underwent a 48-hour evaluation. The testing revealed that her oldest son wasn’t bipolar, and the youngest, though a high-functioning autistic, didn’t have ADHD.

“I’d spent five years becoming an expert on these disorders and teaching my kids that it was OK that these disorders were part of their identity,” she said through tears. “It was like a lightning bolt hit me and I realized that I had to do everything in my power, til my last dying breath, to spread awareness about the mental health industry.”

Kuhn and her husband were relieved, but also angry that their sons had been pumped with psychotic medications for half their lives, she said. By contrast, officials at the PNP Center recommended the boys start neurofeedback therapy at the Neurofeedback Center of Texas, owned and operated by Dr. Tony DeRamus in The Woodlands.

“The first step in the process is a quantitative EEG,” Dr. Agnes Kaufman, who specializes in neurofeedback therapy at the Neurofeedback Center of Texas, told Patch.

The quantitative EEG or qEEG, which has been in use for about 30 years, maps the brain and measures the four specific types of brain wave activity during an hour-long session. With Kuhn’s sons, the test is performed about once per month to gauge brain activity during a specially tailored program-viewing exercise.

As part of the therapy, the doctor attaches sensors to the patient’s scalp affixed with a specialized gel. The sensors then measure the brain waves before sending the information to a computer for analysis while the patient watches television.

“When their brain fires the way we want it to, the [television] picture will stay bright and the sound will stay loud,” Kaufman said. “When the brain misfires, the picture dims and the sound gets soft. Your brain creates stimulation. It wants the bright picture and it wants the sound.”

Kaufman said that over time the therapy can train the brain to fire in a more normal pattern and can help patients who suffer with ADHD, post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, depression, anxiety, memory loss, insomnia, headaches, or issues related to severe emotional stress.

“Once you make those changes in the brain, they stick,” Kaufman said. “The medication only has an effect while it’s in your system. When you change the brain with neurofeedback, it’s changed.”

Once the neurofeedback therapy takes hold, the patient may experience side effects from the medication they’ve been taking, Kaufman cautioned.

As for Kuhn’s sons, they’ve been going through the neurofeedback therapy since June and have begun to respond well to the treatment, their mother said. While there’s still a long way to go with their treatment, the boys are now doing well enough to the point that they’re slowly being weaned off their medication.

“It will probably be months before they are totally off,” she said.

To learn more about neurofeedback therapy and the Neurofeedback Center of Texas, click here.

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