For my sins I work some of the time with kids who present with severe emotional and behavioural disorders. The area is something of a minefield because different schools of thought exist regarding how to manage young people with these conditions that have exotic acronyms like ODD or ADHD or any number of esoterically named syndromes.

ODD is great, it stands for Oppositional Defiant Disorder, this is one where the young person opposes everything. Oh yes, that does mean everything, even the things they want. Try working that little condition out if you’re ever at a loose end.

The only way to deal with these young people effectively is to have clearly defined boundaries and known consequences for crossing those boundaries. Without this there is no basis for any exchange whatsoever, with this there is an arena for horse trading or negotiating which allows the young people to score ‘victories’ while actually managing their behaviours. During adolescence the young person sets their feet upon one of many journeys they will, and for ‘they’ write ‘we’ because we’ve all travelled that same road, undertake. Their world is turned on its head by the predetermined release of hormones into their body’s systems which cause mood swings, changes in temperament, what Nietzsche called ‘the will to power’, identity formation and a cascade of other behavioural drivers or influences.

They are launched into a world of changing terrains, their understanding is called into question and they are faced with the challenge of trying to make sense and infer meaning from it all. Those whose development has been impaired for whatever reason find this time and the shifting order extremely difficult. Their behaviour if it has been dysfunctional already goes into hyper-drive and they fall into all the classic traps of adolescence. They often become involved with substance abuse issues, the police, the judicial system and their lives which have already been difficult ratchet up a gear.

The answer lies in education on the one hand and understanding on the other. Education in the sense of life learning as opposed to academic learning. To the young person with severe EBD there is little solace in maths or science, their world is chaos, mathematics is order and might as well be invisible to them. Education in the way of life, the nature of things and what the deal is for human beings. Understanding is needed on the part of those who deal with them. Understand that these young people are in turmoil, they cannot make sound decisions because their critical reasoning is inactive or under-developed. This makes them easier to deal with but does not address the underlying issues.

The underlying issues are the circumstances that produced them. The key players in this their parents. All young things form attachments with those around them, invariably this is their parents or the significant adults in their lives. If those people themselves are the product of a broken social setting then they can only perpetrate the cycle. They give continuance to the issues which have dogged them and will dog their offspring unless a breakthrough is achieved.

The breakthrough moment is an epiphany on the part of the one who experiences it. Sadly this is not common. There needs to be in place certain favourable conditions before an epiphany can occur, just like a garden plants need the right ingredients in place before they can appear. This is where education comes in and without education there is very little chance of an epiphany occurring. So we find ourselves in a Catch 22 scenario. The result is the formation of peripheral groups within society, people on society’s edge or as they are called the Underclass. The Dalits of South Asia were known as untouchables and they or their equivalent manifest in all societies.

The easy answer is to sneer at these ‘losers’ and ‘no hopers’ but that is not the sign of a developed individual. Understand that they exist and their desire to grow and develop is no less than your own. It is simply the lack of a cohesive framework that they can identify with and see their own place within. You are fortunate, to have read this far offers an indication that you are not one of the Underclass or peripheral folk. Whether by luck or judgement you are privileged to be well aspected in these matters and that in a sense is a responsibility that you carry on behalf of all those less privileged than yourself.

I used to dismiss the idea of heaven and hell as a fanciful weapon within the arsenal of bigotry and dogma. I realise now that both exist, not as components of the architecture of the next world but as features of this. Your freedom and emancipation and your prerogative to pursue the same are blessings and gifts from Creation, they are, in effect, heaven. Being trapped in a mental and emotional prison without the apparent means of escape is, in effect, hell. Spend some time with those whose confining bars are firmly in place, whether they be the bars of delusion, fantasy or the inability to perceive something other than their current state and you will understand the adversities they must overcome and appreciate more fully your own situation.

Do not patronise those who had no part in the formation of their excruciating circumstances. They were dealt a poor hand for whatever reasons, the components of their struggle will be different to your own. Instead resolve to be better yourself, and if not for yourself then for all those whose existence is at times a living hell and whose acuity does not allow them to see the way out of their situation at the moment. Their epiphany may come, all strength when it does, but in the meantime stride forward on behalf of us all, each victory you achieve, each new peak that you surmount, each obstacle you overcome is a feather in all our caps not least of all those who currently know no alternative.