Cases in Emotional and Behavioral Disorders of Children and Youth

This casebook contains cases that I have garnered from my reading of both popular and professional literature and from personal contacts with individuals who have confronted difficult or disturbing behavior in their roles as parents, teachers, or adult members of a community. In some instances, I have used direct quotations from the source, sometimes with minor editing. In others I have summarized the original source in my own words. Still other cases were written by someone else, whom I credit as the source, specifically for this book. In all cases I have kept the facts conveyed by the original. The cases are grouped by topic. However, instructors or students may find that a given case has conceptual links to more than one topic. This is as it should be, as emotional and behavioral disorders are not phenomena that can be packaged neatly into a single category. Although the cases are grouped by specific topics, many or most of them could bear revisiting as a student progresses through coursework. Some of the questions about the cases, and some questions an instructor might want to ask or a student might pose, may have no fixed answer. Moreover, the "answers" might change after further study and research of the problem or topic area. I have provided a brief introduction for each case. I have also suggested questions that could be discussed in class or answered in writing, or both. The questions I pose are by no means the only ones of importance, and I encourage instructors and/or students to formulate their own questions about the cases. If the source of the case is a published work, I give the citation and the full reference in the references for the casebook. If it was contributed by another individual or is based on my personal experience with students, I state that in the source note. I hope this casebook will enrich and enliven any course in which it is used. It is important to recognize that all of the cases are descriptions of actual youngsters and events. They are not hypothetical. My hope is that studying them will help prepare the individuals who read them to work more effectively with young people who have such disorders. James M. Kauffman Charlottesville, Virginia - October, 2003Kauffman, James M. is the author of 'Cases in Emotional and Behavioral Disorders of Children and Youth', published 2004 under ISBN 9780131185678 and ISBN 0131185675.