Dyslexia & Depression: The Hidden Sorrow

The book begins by reviewing past empirical research into dyslexia, its symptoms and diagnosis into how it affects individuals at school, at home and lastly in the workplace. Such a review was felt to be needed to enlighten the reader to the historical aspect of a condition which many believe to be medical in cause, but educational in treatment. Whilst dyslexia may have been recognised by many medical minds for over a century, it has only been fully recognised by educationalists for less than a decade, thus the study of secondary manifestations due to a lack of recognition by teachers is the basis for this book. A review is also given of four of the authors own published works, of which two form pilot studies for this book. The main study of N=29 adult dyslexics used both qualitative (Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis-IPA) and quantitative methodologies. IPA was found to be beneficial in understanding the life experiences and secondary manifestations of participants. The majority of participants were only diagnosed as dyslexic after leaving school and this the author finds typical of the many dyslexics he has encountered. Whilst the study set out to investigate depression as a sub-factor, it turned out to be a main focus of the study as the majority of those who took part were depressed at some points in their child and adult lives. Gender also turned out to be an important variable in understanding how male and female dyslexics cope with the educational experiences they encountered.