He is the eldest of his parents’ three sons, showing some delayed developmental milestones, usually withdrawn and unable to focus. By 5 or 6 years old, he could only use short sentences. He was sent to attend special school.

When he was 18 years old, the mother and his younger brother came to our clinic. For the past 2 years he had become more and more rigid, sensitive, with aggressive outbursts. Over 3 months mother was putting medicine in his food and drink and he slowly got better.

Few days ago the mother made a call to us. She said he seems to get more argumentative, bad tempered and demanding. He wants to learn driving because many of his friends are doing so. He wants things that his peers have. He is getting defensive when family speak to him.

Mother asked if the medicine can no longer control his illness, if her son is getting more and more ill. I explained to the mother, her son is at a stage where it’s normal for them to be argumentative, defensive, disobedient, rebellious, influenced by peers, having strong ego … What kind of expectation is she having? A son who listens to her completely? Never says no? Quiet and submissive? …?

We quite often overlook the stage of normal development and the environmental influences, and focus too much on the problems someone has. He’s bad-tempered, she’s irrational, he gets jealous all the time, she is disorganized, they’re lazy… But perhaps that happens to everyone at that stage of life, perhaps that happens to most people if they are under that level of pressure, perhaps there’s something else going on in that person’s life but we just don’t know, …

We don’t want to use medication to control one’s behaviour so much that this person loses the self, so much that this person lives how we want them to live but not how they want to live.