BY Dr Ong Say How

In this final column, I felt an article on resilience and recovery would be appropriate to celebrate the triumph of the human spirit in overcoming life's adversities.

I remember vividly a 10-year-old boy, Alan, who was referred to me because of his lying and bullying behaviour in school. His school grades were also deteriorating.

When I met his parents, I had a feeling that there was something they were not telling me. They looked like a typical nuclear family but what stood out was that he had a different skin tone from his siblings and he did not resemble his parents.

I could not get him to come out of his shell just by talking, so I took out my storybooks on how kids manage real-life social situations. When we read one about how a boy coped with the issue of adoption, his anxiety and unease became palpable. I gently asked him whether he had ever felt like the character in the book. He nodded.

It became apparent to me that Alan had been teased by his peers for looking different from his siblings who were also from the same school. This perturbed him greatly and he could not concentrate in school.

After fighting with peers who teased him, he turned to bullying smaller kids in class. He also started lying to cover up his mistakes.

A private session with his parents revealed that they had been postponing the disclosure to Alan about his birth parents as they had been waiting for the 'perfect time' to tell him.

Meanwhile Alan, though suspecting the truth, was unable to express his anguish to his parents who refused to talk about it. I spoke to each party and opened the channels for communication and understanding between the parents and the child, so that honesty and mutual trust could prevail and they could heal and recover.

With some help, Alan was allowed to talk about his disappointment and fear of being abandoned. His parents were in turn able to respond to his feelings, apologise for keeping this secret from him and pledge their unconditional love for him.

There was another teenage boy, Roger, who came to me for treatment because he had a mentally ill mother who was unable to care for him and his younger siblings. She was also verbally abusive sometimes. His father had to work long hours and had little patience for complaints and requests.

Roger, being the eldest, had to take on a parenting role. Not academically inclined by nature, he quickly lost interest in his studies and began to fail in school. He became withdrawn and lacked motivation. He took refuge in a world of fantasy and drawing, in which he excelled.

After missing school for a year, he lacked confidence and did not want to return.

We got him into the YouthReach programme of the Singapore Association for Mental Health where he shared his drawing interests with other kids recovering from mental health challenges. This gave him a sense of purpose.

With the programme's support and family work, coupled with effective medical treatment, Roger gained enough confidence to be re-integrated in school. This year, he got into an animation course in a technical school.

Roger's case illustrates that not every child is cut out to do well academically. It is important to acknowledge and cultivate other skills and strengths in the child.

What humbles me greatly is to witness how a child or a family turns adversity into victory by making the most of what they have, mutually supporting one another and tapping on their strengths and the resources available to them.

With modern medicine and evidence-based treatment, every child or adolescent has a chance to rise beyond adversity and develop into a resilient adult.

Every day, when I step out of my clinic, I glance at a drawing Roger gave me which hangs prominently by the door. It is a reminder of how the human spirit can triumph over adversity.

Dr Ong Say How is deputy chief of the department of child & adolescent psychiatry, Institute of Mental Health. This is his last column.

This article was first published in Mind Your Body, The Straits Times on Dec 11, 2008.