You undoubtedly know that psychological dysfunction can lead to pain, misery and suffering. You may not know that
dysfunction kills or disables more people than mental illness because dysfunction, not mental illness, sets the stage for
most life-threatening addictions.
A patient can suffer from both mental illness and dysfunction at the same time and
each requires a different treatment protocol. For example, medications can help treat mental illness—but not dysfunction.
In dysfunction, patients can still make voluntary, rational, healthy choices; in mental illness they often cannot.
A minority of the world’s population suffers from some degree
of mental illness while the majority suffer from some degree of dysfunction. Both afflictions
can limit the quality and/or the length of a human life, yet each requires a totally different therapeutic approach to alleviate
the problem.
For example, people suffering from dysfunction often lack tools of cognition because they never received
them in the first place. A mind that can process new information can learn about these missing tools,
and how to use them. Tragically, a mind suffering from untreated mental illness will
often lose the capacity to process and apply new information, no matter how helpful.
Dysfunction deals with reality as best it can, with inadequate tools. Mental illness often disconnects from
reality. When mental illness and dysfunction coexist, supervised medication and education
usually produces the best outcome. Addressing the mental illness first generally helps to make it possible for the educational
process to help overcome the dysfunction.
Hamilton teaches adults privately and/or in business environments. "Dysfunction can make it equally difficult
to manage a life, a relationship, a job, a family, a marriage, an international mega-corporation or a small business."
With regard to parenting, "Adult dysfunction makes it virtually impossible to raise a child who won’t
wind up with psychological wounds, scars and baggage. The children of dysfunctional parents make a lot of self-destructive
choices as they try—and fail—to mature."
Hamilton works exclusively with adults. He believes that they alone can provide healthy models for children
to emulate. A child does not raise itself in a vacuum; adults have a full-time responsibility for teaching, mentoring
and raising their children but they need the right tools to do the job. Inadequate tools will allow harm to come
to the parents, the children, the children’s spouses and the children’s children, generation after generation.
