Rescue Me: The NYU Child Study Center’s Ransom Notes Ad Campaign
December 11, 2007 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Rescue me: That is the essence of the message of the “Ransom Notes” “public awareness campaign” that the New York University Child Study Center is launching. I’ve noted the use of shocking and alarmist language in the ads, which feature fictional “ransom notes,” with the captors being “untreated psychiatric disorders,” including autism, Asperger Syndrome, bulimia, depression, ADHD, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The image of these conditions as kidnappers, abductors, criminals—normal child snatchers—who have gotten hold of our children is troubling and, further, harmful and offensive—and many autistic self-advocates and parents have been blogging about why:
- Action for Autism
- Crimson Thoughts
- Autista
- Whose Planet Is It Anyways
- Vickie Forman
- Mom-NOS (with a love letter)
- Asperger Square 8
- Mother of Shrek
- Autism Street
- Susan Senator
- stop.think.autism
- Abnormal Diversity
- Blog from the Windowsill
- My Thoughts On….
- From Here to There and Back
- Embracing the Chaos
- A Day in the Life
- Momformation
- Resilient Mom
- Krista’s Thoughts
- Fertility Notes
- The McElroy Chronicles
- Chaotic Idealism
(If you have written a post about the Ransom Notes campaign that is not listed here, I’d appreciate it if you might leave a link in the comments section; thank you.)
My concern about the NYU Center’s Ransom Notes campaign is twofold. First, with its imagery of a child “captured” by some devious creature (autism, ADHD, etc.), the campaign revives outmoded ideas about these sorts of conditions.
The “Ransom Note” campaign draws in part on the myth of the changeling, in which a human child was said to have been snatched from its cradle by trolls and replaced with an ugly, deformed, creature. This troll-child, the changeling, is a disabled child. While I don’t think that parents today always knowingly invoke this folk story when they refer to their autistic child as once normal and now “lost”; references to autistic children as an “empty shell” do suggest this notion of the changeling, of a child stolen away and a deformed being left in her or his place.
Second, while there is no question that the NYU Center seeks to help and support children with issues that more than need addressing, and to assist their families, I as a parent of an autistic child, a disability rights advocate, and an educator and academic, am greatly concerned about the misconceptions, misunderstanding, and limited perspective that the “Ransom Notes” campaign promotes. The notion that a child’s true and actual, normal self has been stolen away by some disorder (autism) is harmful to how other people perceive and treat my autistic son. The image of autism promoted by the “Ransom Notes” campaign is purely negative and can only result in people seeing autism in general and my autistic son in particular in a highly negative light.
This is a “public awareness” campaign that makes the public aware only of one very dark aspect of being an autistic person and of raising an autistic child. Spend a day in our household and, while you will witness more than a few moments of anxiety, fretfulness, and a bit of noise, I hope you might most of all sense my son’s limitless desire to do his best, to struggle through his worries, and to smile and speak in half-echoed snatches of phrases—-his patience and his constant efforts to try and try harder. I hope you might most of all sense what Jim and I feel always for Charlie and our small family, unconditional love, faith in each other, and effervescent hope.
It is not a household that Charlie, or Jim or I, feel at all in need of being rescued from.
This is the full text of a letter by Ari Ne’eman, President of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network. If you would like to add your name to the letter, please send an email to Ari Ne’eman.
To the NYU Child Study Center and the supporters of the “Ransom Notes” advertising campaign:
We, the undersigned organizations, are writing to you regarding your new ad campaign for the NYU Child Study Center: “Ransom Notes”. Our organizations represent people with a wide range of disabilities, including those portrayed in your campaign, as well as family members, professionals and others whose lives are affected by disabilities. As people who live and work with disability, we cannot help but be concerned by the way your campaign depicts individuals with disabilities. By choosing to portray people on the autism spectrum as well as those living with OCD, ADHD and other disabilities as kidnapped or possessed children, you have inadvertently reinforced many of the worst stereotypes that have prevented children and adults with disabilities from gaining inclusion, equality and full access to the services and supports they require.
While the “Ransom Notes” campaign was no doubt a well-intentioned effort to increase awareness and thus support for the disabilities it describes, the means through which it attempts this have the opposite effect. When a child with ADHD is described as “a detriment to himself and those around him,” it hurts the efforts of individuals, parents and families to ensure inclusion of students with learning disabilities in the same classrooms as their peers. When individuals with diagnoses of autism and Asperger’s Syndrome are told that their capacities for social interaction and independent living are completely destroyed, it deeply offends the many adults of these neurologies who have succeeded in living independent lives, forming social relationships and achieving personal, financial and social success. While it is true that there are many difficulties associated with the disabilities you describe, many individuals with those diagnostic categories do succeed – not necessarily by becoming indistinguishable from their non-disabled peers, but by finding ways to maximize their unique abilities and potential on their own terms.
It is important to point out that while the Center has promoted this campaign under the tag line, “Don’t let a psychiatric disorder take your child,” several of the disabilities described by the campaign are neurological rather than psychiatric. The implication that autism and Asperger’s Syndrome are psychiatric conditions rather than neurological ones, combined with the implicit threat that the kidnapping note sends to parents (“Ignore this and your kid will pay”), calls to mind the damaging “refrigerator mother” theory popularized by Dr. Bruno Bettelheim over thirty-five years ago. The stigma and misinformation that resulted from Dr. Bettelheim’s mistaken assertion that bad mothers were the cause of autism drove parents away from seeking diagnostic services and appropriate educational interventions for their children. Like Bettelheim, the “Ransom Notes” campaign places a stigma on both parents and children, thus discouraging them from pursuing a diagnosis that might have been helpful in gaining access to the appropriate services, supports and educational tools. The autism spectrum should be recognized for what it is: a lifelong neurological condition – not a kidnapper that steals children in the dead of the night.
Furthermore, the use of kidnapping as an analogy for any of the disabilities depicted in the campaign is highly inappropriate, regardless of the origin of the conditions involved. It is true that diagnoses of ADHD, autism, Asperger’s Syndrome and OCD often accompany great hardships for families. It is true that depression and bulimia are terrible disorders that require treatment. Yet, the way you choose to convey those messages is inappropriate and counterproductive. Individuals with disabilities are not replacements for normal children that are stolen away by the disability in question. They are whole people, deserving of the same rights, respect and dignity afforded their peers. Too often, the idea that children with disabilities are less than human lies at the heart of horrific crimes committed against them. The tragic instances of murder and infanticide against people on the autism spectrum and with other developmental disabilities are linked with the perception that these people are less than human. We – the adults, families, professionals and others affected by these conditions – assert that nothing could be further from the truth.
We are also concerned that the negative stereotypes the “Ransom Notes” campaign depicts could make it harder for the many people with disabilities and their family members who are working to ensure that students with disabilities have the right to be included in their home schools while still receiving all necessary services. Federal law mandates that students with disabilities have the right to a “free and appropriate public education” in the “least restrictive environment”. Your advertising campaign claims that children with disabilities could be a detriment to those around them and as a result hurts the efforts of parents working to secure the opportunity for their children to be included with their peers.
While we recognize and applaud the good intentions intended by this effort, we must urge you to withdraw this campaign immediately, as it threatens to harm the very people whom it seeks to benefit: people with disabilities, their families and their supporters. In the press release announcing this campaign, the Center gave as one of its goals “eliminating the stigma of being or having a child with a psychiatric disorder”. While we may disagree with the Center’s choice of labels, we are in full agreement with the goal of eliminating stigma against people with disabilities and their families. This campaign serves to increase that stigma rather than lessen it. We hope that you will heed our concerns and those of many other people with disabilities, family members, professionals and countless others and end the “Ransom Notes” advertising campaign.
Please do not to hesitate to contact any of the organizations listed as signatories to this letter in order to better solicit the opinions of the disability community prior to your next advertising campaign. We would be more than glad to help the Center to develop better strategies to achieve its excellent goals. The NYU Child Study Center has the potential to do enormous good for children and families affected by disability. By showing that the Center respects the views of people with disabilities, families and professionals, you can make that aspiration a reality.
Sincerely,
Ari Ne’eman
Founding President
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network
I’d be happy to add my name to Ne’eman’s letter. I sent a protest note to the director of the NYU medical center and, like a number of others, received a form response that basically parrots the information on the campaign.
While I think I probably have more “curebie” tendencies than some folks who regularly post here (or rather, I think I’m less suspicious of some of the medical approaches to what I see as symptom-relief for my child’s evident sensory overload, gastric distress, insomnia, anxiety, etc — I see no need to “cure” xyr autism or suppress putatively “abnormal behavioral” issues) I find the campaign deeply disturbing and completely over the top for a center that should represent state-of-the-art academic knowledge.
Sign me up. Kristina, if you need to contact me, you know my info.
Of course I want my name on the letter. Thanks for giving me the opportunity.
Thank you—further perusal of the Center’s website further confounded me!
I’d like to be added to the letter (full name: Anne Corwin).
Add Cliff Schumacher to the list. I’m in full support (though you’ve already got my little post up there, thanks for that).
Cliff
I would like to add my name to the letter. My full name is Dora Raymaker.
Although I don’t think that I said anything new, I did a blog post about this at http://chaosandjoy.blogspot.com/2007/12/autistic-self-advocacy-network.html
I’m writing my letters right now.
I haven’t blogged about that appalling campaign, for a few reasons.
The first reason was because I think stuff like that just insults the parents reading it – as if they don’t know their child’s diagnosis.
The second is that the public misinformation being spread in those ads is hard to take back once it spreads – the notes are fear-based and imply hopelessness.
But also, in the case of the information on eating disorders on the site, the information is simply WRONG. Wrong about what the illness is, and a dead end in terms of what to do about it.
This is a campaign in search of a reason for being.
Please add janet norman-bain, Roger Bain and Alex Bain.
I wrote a post here:
http://fromherethereandback.blogspot.com/2007/12/just-say-no-to-ignorance.html
Thank you for working so hard to build awareness of this campaign and the controversy behind it, Kristina.
Please add me to the letter. Beth Andersen
That’s an excellent letter — kudos to Ari!
Please add me as a signatory:
Bonnie Ventura
Administrator, Aspergian Pride
I talk about it in a post here. http://bigsisterlittlebrother9497.blogspot.com/2007/12/happy-getting-healthy-and-fine-just-way.html#links. I have plans for another post about it and our letters once we’re all feeling better. Everyone is sick here. Also, please add my name to the letter. Michele Kopesky
Please feel free to adding the newly created “The National Autistic Society of America” (TNASA) to the list. TNASA is now an officially recognized 501 c 3 corporation by the Internal Revenue Service.
While this website is in no way even remotely ready for “primetime” (it’s under construction and most pages are simply boilerplate templates), I have posted a modified version of Ari’s letter to it along with info from ABFH’s blog.
The about us is basically a repost of the NAS mission with person first language removed.
http://www.autisticnation.com/The_National_Autistic_Society_of_America/Home/Home.html
For future reference, the site url is http://www.autisticnation.com
Add me too. Eleanor Wallace
Let me also add that on the site is personal stuff of mine which I am using to test different templates . It will be removed before the official launch.
I’ve decide to cancel a trip to New York. I was going to take my beautiful, autistic daughter there when we were in that area over the holidays. She loves cities and I used to live in NYC ages ago. I imagined us walking around and looking at decorations and shopping. I thought it would be a thrill for her. Now I imagine walking around and seeing these ads plastered everywhere, and, as she recognizes the word “autism” and knows it applies to her, asking me: “What’s ransom? What’s a terrorist? What’s a kidnapper?”
No thanks. We’ll spend our money elsewhere.
Hello all,
Sorry for the miscommunication, but for those of you who would like to add their names to the letter, if you could please indicate either an organizational affillliation or some other connection to disability issues (i.e: self-advocate, individual with a disability, mother/father/brother of individual with a disability, etc.) or even “concerned citizen”, we’d appreciate it. Please e-mail me with your signatures at aneeman@autisticadvocacy.org. As you may notice, the letter is not currently up as it’s not yet ready for publication but you can see a draft copy by e-mailing me.
Regards,
Ari Ne’eman
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network, President
http://www.autisticadvocacy.org
info@autisticadvocacy.org
Ditto. Vicki Forman.
I also am concerned that autism (which, whether or not you think it can be cured or remediated) remains what most of us know to be a life-long disability. Not so anorexia or bulimia. The shoddy thinking here appalls me.
Here are a couple more links to blogs that are protesting the ads:
http://blog.kkorner.net/2007/12/dear-bipolar-disorder.html
http://www.fertilitynotes.com/2007/12/10/perception-matters
Thanks, Bonnie! I found this post through the trackback. The more I read it and the responses, the more the outrage forms cohesive paths in my brain.
Hi Kristina,
I pondered this issue for the last few days. My response is as follows:
We live in an era marking the ripple effect of “shock jock” performance. Various celebrities have ignited public and media attention with high and very low behavior… to what end? Perhaps the public relations industry takes the “any news is good news” approach.
Given that autism is the “malady du jour”, it strikes my cynical self that there is money in it. Every fly- by- night offer out there is advertised on web sites. The hook is simply waiting to grab needy parents who want so desperately to help their children. The “miracle cure” brigade is integrated with links for medical researchers, when autism is googled. Parents and caretakers are frantic, like the mice on a wheel, going nowhere fast. They are the quintessential target audience, needy and afraid.
The blog post continues: http://www.revolutionhealth.com/blogs/resilientmom/ransom-notes-for-auti-9828
Thanks for galvanizing parents!
xR
This is the basic letter I’ve sent to various departments at NYU, and all the sponsors I could find including the magazines that were listed in the press release. This is the letter I sent via email to the Asperger’s Syndrome Service at the Child Study Center:
Dear Dr. Geller,
I’m writing about The NYU Child Study Center’s “Ransom Notes” campaign, to ask you to help have the ads pulled at once.
The “child held for ransom” metaphor has no scientific basis, and the language used is misleading and largely inaccurate. The idea that most people (all people, if one interprets the ads that way) with Asperger Syndrome are doomed to a life of “complete isolation” flies in the face of *all* extant research on AS, not to mention the reality of many people, both prominent and not, who have AS and lead satisfying lives with sometimes as much social interaction as “typical” people have.
Some unintended consequences of the ad campaign might be:
1. An *increase,* rather than a decrease, in suicidal behavior among children and youth who see the negative ads as aimed at them personally, or who become even more stigmatized by society as a result of the demeaning imagery.
2. Bullies capitalizing on the “held for ransom” idea who may actually capture a child with AS, with potentially fatal consequences. Studies have shown that when a group is singled out for negative, derogatory rhetoric, an increase in hate crimes against that group often follows.
3. Parents unwilling to seek out treatment for their child because they think the ads reflect the attitudes of staff they might meet at your center.
4. Parents unwilling to seek out treatment because they fear the stigmatization that the ads encourage.
5. Parents who are familiar with these disorders are not going to believe the ads and are less likely to come to you for help, thus undermining your credibility and decreasing rather than increasing the number of children served.
Please help end the campaign. Plan any future campaign with input from the disabled and parent communities who are the intended recipients of your services.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Paula Durbin-Westby
Hi Kristina –
I blogged this issue as well, though my post features little commentary by me and instead features Ari’s letter which I consider to be appropriate, professional, and effective in communicating my feelings.
http://onedadsopinion.blogspot.com/2007/12/solidarity.html
I blogged on it, comparing with hysteria campaigns about other maladies du jour (since they’re hell bent on comparing us to such conditions anyway): http://rettdevil.blogspot.com/2007/12/awareness-does-not-equal-information.html
Individuals can now join ASAN, ADAPT, TASH and other disability rights groups and sign on to our joint statement at http://www.petitiononline.com/ransom/petition.html.
Thanks and we appreciate your support on this important issue!
-Ari
http://www.petitiononline.com/ransom/petition.html
Sorry, that link was mistyped.
Although these “ransom notes” are worded harshly, it needs to be said. If one parent of one child acts sooner and gets the early intervention their child needs then all the better. Hopefully it will also raise awareness to some very ignorant people who would like to assume our children are just being spoiled brats.
I wrote a posting in our German autism weblog: “Entführt?”
Danke!
We teach our children that “words can hurt”. Given that I am a proponent of the written word, and support utilizing its power, it saddens me that NYU blemished an opportunity to help those with autism. BBDO did not consider the power and connotation of the word ransom.
This is not about parents in the closet of autism. There is no closet or curtain to hide behind. The majority of us are doing our best to get help and support our kids.
http://autismspectrum.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/my-son-was-kidnapped-why-havent-i-noticed/
That’s my late-in-the-game blog entry.
Kristina, I also added a late blog post on this issue today, with links to and quotes from your posts. Thanks for all the specifics and for your perspective. K.