What I love about DDF - I post something, come back 3 days later, and we've moved on to completely different topics
w/r/t the OTD and some of the other mental health related items - stigmas in our community are a huge problem. Take for example, a young man with a learning disability. How many of our Yeshivos can help these kids - and that's when they are diagnosed. What about that kid who has a learning disability that's undiagnosed? Or what happens to him even if it is? Very few yeshivos (although I think that it's changing, and please enlighten me if I am wrong) can support kids with some learning disabilities. The kid isn't learning, but is otherwise bright and has outbursts. He's treated as a troublemaker. Maybe even kicked out. The Rebbiem can't connect with him and it turns him off to learning. So what happens? Come high school the 'good' yeshivas don't want him. He winds up in a less respected Yeshiva because that's the best he can do, and the kids in in his grade are likely to include kids that are truly trouble makers.... and you see where this path is going.
This hit a chord for me. I had learning issues, which were treated as laziness, which made me a target for the rebbiem, which led me to be turned off to torah learning in a four year span where I was in four different schools. I had a smart principal who (even though I was being asked to leave his yeshiva) suggested to my parents to find a smaller school. Which they did. It was the best thing for me. My largest class had about 10 kids. It was a small yeshiva OOT, and being in a city where I wasn't surrounded by Jews made me learn a lot about myself, religion, and what it meant to me.
I don't think it's fair to say I was ever OTD. I always kept shabbos and kosher. But I definitely didn't see myself as a member of the Yeshivish community I grew up in. I can only imagine how difficult my shidduch life might have been (even 20-25 years ago), had I opted to go that route.
I think I've mentioned it here before, but at my bar mitzvah I wore a hat - wore it through 9th grade, because at that time that was the policy of my Yeshiva. At some point between 10th and 11th grade, I stopped wearing a hat. My rationale was this. I enjoyed learning, I went to minyan, but I also went to movies, and talked to girls. If I wore a black hat, and did the latter two, I'd be viewed as a faker, if I didn't wear a hat, I'd be viewed as the modern guy who likes to daven and learn, so I opted out of wearing a hat.
I know this kind of post will get plenty of comments and quotes. B"H - I am happy where I am in life and my relationship with Hashem. While I may have chosen a path slightly different from the one people might have expected of me as a child, I am truly blessed. I was also a kid who came from a good, frum home, with married and caring parents, and B"H no history of abuse or drugs.
It's Friday and I am drifting, the TL;DR here - there are many reasons kids go OTD. One of them is being labeled because of their learning disability. While I know the situation is improving, we need to keep on working so that we don't lose these kids too.
