Dont Guess With Aggression

One of the group's I'm involved in on Facebook is a parent support group for children with emotional and learning difficulty. I've only recently (at the time of writing) been actively interacting with the group for a little while but there's a clear leaning towards pseudoscience in some "therapies" for these kiddos.

This is actually pretty understandable. Behavioral difficulties can become unmanageable really fast. And parents, most of whom don't have the training to cope (I'm lucky to have had classes via foster care training) can get unraveled really quickly. Even those trained, myself included, can become overwhelmed. It's a truly difficult and frightening thing to deal with. But this doesn't mean you should look to alternative therapies; quite the opposite. In my honest opinion, all that will do is waste time you could be spending finding a treatment plan that will actually help, and help long term.

This brings me to the unfortunate interaction that I'm discussing today. Posted in the aforementioned group was a post asking advice about using aromatherapy, essential oils, and homeopathy for treating anxiety, impulsiveness, aggression, and hyperactivity. There are several evidence based methods for treating these behaviors; none of which involve homeopathy.

Hyperactivity and impulsiveness are likely symptomatic of ADHD (though only a licensed medical professional can diagnosis whether or not it is). According to the CDC one of the diagnostic criteria is hyperactivity-impulsiveness. Though other treatments may be more effective for different individuals, the most common treatment is stimulants, with amphetamine being the most well known. A meta analysis by Faraone, et al has shown, within the limitations of such a study, that stimulants have the highest effect size of the medications analyzed.

My understanding is that anxiety can be both a disorder unto itself, as is the case with General Anxiety Disorder, or symptomatic of a number of other conditions. The NIH has a good primer on the subject and I'll leave the deeper dive to them.

Aggression seems to be as varied as anxiety where causes are concerned; they can range from normal emotional response to viral infection, such as rabies. Aggressive behavior in children can often lead to problems in school, including socialization, etc. In severe cases a child can hurt themselves or others. Of the behaviors mentioned in the original post, this one, to me, is the most problematic because it has the propensity to have long term physical, psychological, and social impacts on a child. Any delay in identification of causes and treatments due to forays into pseudoscience can further damage a child's development. Through guidance of physicians and therapists, a combination of behavioral therapy and medication is often used. Additionally, medication has shown to be fairly effective across a range of conditions.

This is just a very superficial overview of the current medical treatments available for management of the aforementioned behaviors. There is always more to learn if one looks. If you keep to the information that has been proven, like the good skeptic you are, you'll note a lack of discussion about homeopathy and essential oils. At least you will among well constructed studies. A number of attempts to show that essential oils are effective on pain have popped up in the literature. Science Based Medicine has a great article discussing some of these.

Essential oils are a very real thing and many, such as camphor and eucalyptol (think Vicks VapoRub), have documented physiological effects. What they are not, however, are magic cure-alls for behavior. Practitioners of aromatherapy have made bold claims such as curing depression, treating respiratory problems, and even treating cancer. These are, of course, unfounded claims. Though I'll leave discussion of those to another post. Behaviorally, I'd be willing to believe that aromatherapy could help with anxiety, smells are relaxing after all. I haven't seen any confirming evidence however. Going beyond that, I'd need some more convincing evidence, which seems to be in short supply.

Finally there is homeopathy. Homeopathy has long been known in the scientific community to be bunk, pseudoscientific nonsense. This, however doesn't stop the special pleading of practitioners. Even those who try to stand homeopathy on the straw leg of placebo are faced with the cold light of scientific evidence eventually. In short, when it comes to your child's health, homeopathy won't cut it.

When trying to explain these things to the poster it seems that, despite the nature of her question, she was not interested in information but validation of the "treatments" she was already using; a classic example of conformation bias and argument from anecdote resulted. I'd like to convey here what I could not convey to her: Don't just guess with your child's behavioral problems. Talk to licenced professionals, don't waste time with things that sound too good to be true, they probably are. Delaying mental health care, proper mental health care, for you will only lead to, at best short term perceived relief. For your child it will have lifelong repercussions.