Monday, February 24, 2025

Worrybot: a personal review.

I was on holiday somewhere near the equator when I received an email about writing a book review. A book about “middle-aged” children. I do know a bit about this “group” as during my training in Child Psychiatry, I landed a Senior Registrar post at a “middle-aged” children in-patient unit that provided me with experience that I never imagined possible and probably set me up for dealing with children with difficult problems of all ages (psychiatric or otherwise).

This much I will tell you about me for now as I have not quite make up my mind if I should or should ever tell you more.

This happened after having read the book (and more than once) that to review such an interesting and suspenseful book will needs lots of spoiler alerts. Even then, I may not want to spoil too much really. Yet there are bits that were such gems that I cannot wait to tell you.

Hopefully I am not violating Royal College book review guidelines on such reviews.

Spoiler alert: Making a Worrybot with shoe boxes in the book to mimic a human robot so that the sick child could let the robot swallow his symptoms.

“No, no, no. He is not sick, he is just anxious. You are too clinical, as the so called symptoms were just his worries.” Did I hear you say this?

Sorry, that was just my deliberate attempt to illustrate how we may have over-clinicalised many childhood conditions and in some countries all for the benefits of extensive use of medication/s. One boy I know was worried during Covid that he was obsessed with his “Happy Birthday” hand washing and was prescribed an SSRI plus sleeping tablets after a 10 minute visit to a Psychiatrist somewhere I am not going to disclose!

Simon should patent Worrybot as it would be safer than SSRIs (I won’t say what they might do as you can easily Google it) and be a bit green on those Amazon Boxes. By the way GREEN is often mentioned as a topic of education together with 5-a-day though our chief star in the book Josh only likes ORANGE. Five oranges a day5-a-day!!!!i To Joshs it is totally non-sense (ooops, I meant non-science based and it was indeed pulled out of thin air!)

Big surprise here: guess who are the other “patients” that used Worrybot apart from Josh, our STAR after he decided to look through his worry slips that Worrybot is supposed to have swallowed!

First---his Mom: “my performance management appraisal meeting”.

Then---his Dad: “never getting another acting job!”

What a gem or two gems! Sorry for spoiling, but I could NOT NOT tell you. His parents certainly saved on Gin or Whisky. Ooops, she is director of PUBLIC HEALTH.

Here is the best bit of Simon’s book: on lying. On Josh’s first new school day: Dad had no choice but to lie about Mom losing her car key etc. to rescue Josh from his new found friend or to be exact, his friend’s regular friend. Then the next day, Dad forgot his lie but luckily, Josh’s little sister remembered the lie and lied to rescue Dad from the new friend’s mom.

Phew, they were taught early on, in-utero or otherwise by Mom: Sometimes it’s kinder not to tell the truth.

Well, done, Simon, my kind of book.

So in this book for the “middle-aged kids”, is there sex?

After a neutral non gender start, the robot that attended school for the school refuser( which by the way is the CENTRAL part of the book) turn out to be female and is called Charlie. So when Josh asked his parents if Charlie could come for a sleepover, the parents, were humming and ha-ing and were seriously dubious but did not want to destroy their troubled son’s improved socialisation new era, were seriously troubled!

Do parents let a different gender friend come for a sleepover?

When they hesitantly plus reluctantly agreed, mom was asking about food that Charlie would like!

Smart Willows( little sister that knew how to lie) came to the rescue with the truth this time: its only a robot! Translated as totally asexual!

But Simon was quite subtle. But, yes, there is sex!

It is perhaps time I should throw in my halfpenny's worth as someone that spent a few decades dealing with children’s problems (and that includes adolescents of course) that one of the most important lesson I have learnt is not to dismiss and tried to get rid of defence mechanisms that they used. We need time, time to understand what really was going on. Rushing into the use of medication, be it SSRIs, antipsychotics or stimulants is a definite NO NO for me. My recent experience from a son of Holocaust surviving parents taught me that even denial may be a better way of coping than too much stirring up of sad old memories. After all, I have listened to a Maudsley Psychiatrist’s talk on his experience of the Kings Cross fire survivors: those that had talking therapy did the worst!

These are the gems I tried to dance around without spoiling the main story of the book which Simon has skillfully woven together, although I must admit that at times it was very tempting to reveal more! A must read for anyone wanting to be an organic child psychiatrist or parents who do not really want labels or meds for their unusual child.

I have to raise my hat to the Royal College of Psychiatrist’s decision to review this book given some of the stories I have heard; of friend’s grand kid’s experience with seeing Child Psychiatrists where diagnosis of what I called the 3 A disorders were common: namely, ADHD, Autistic Spectrum Disorder & Anorexia Nervosa and often with more than one of those and I have met one with all three. Simon had subtly inferred that we need to spend time to understand and not jump in to change what the child is using to resolve any problem.

One of the best lines in the book: “Maybe taking advice from a school refuser wasn’t such a bad idea!” Simon perhaps was aiming for this and it fits in with our ancient Chinese saying: A long sufferer will turn into a good doctor! To finish, I have to quote Picasso: I spent a life time trying to draw like a child. Perhaps we should try to think like one.



Conflict of Interest: Simon’s sister after giving birth to her first child came to one of my Child Psychiatry seminars and subtly asked if she would rotate to my department as a trainee registrar, could she bring her six weeks old baby. The rest as they say is history and I did not realise I was one of the first consultants to allow that. When she realised that I was asked to review her brother’s new book, she asked if I could be kind!

No, you do not need to be kind to a book like this one.


The BJP review: BJPsych Bulletin , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , August 2024 , pp. 272


















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