Shealah West Therapy, LLC

05/03/2026

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders are widely misunderstood, misdiagnosed, UNDERdiagnosed, yet more prevalent than AUTISM, with little to no supports in place for these individuals and their families.

05/03/2026

A March 2026 Lancet Psychiatry review (the largest to date) found no robust evidence that medicinal cannabis effectively treats anxiety, depression, or PTSD. The research, analyzing 54 randomized controlled trials (1980–2025), suggests risks like addiction and psychosis may outweigh benefits, contrary to widespread use for these conditions.

The largest review of medicinal cannabis to date found it doesn’t effectively treat anxiety, depression, or PTSD—despite millions using it for those reasons. Researchers warn it could even make mental health worse, raising risks like psychosis and addiction while delaying proven treatments. Some...

05/02/2026

Getting this! My families are always looking for resources and this looks like a great one!

We just released a new book called Crash Course FASD. It is a short, comprehensive text that provides you with a good sense of the research literature on the basics of FASD.

If you are in the field of FASD, we hope this provides you with new insights and will serve as a text that can help you in your advocacy work.

If you are in the fields of SLP, social work, OT, psychology, education, or criminal justice, FASD is far more common than autism, but is poorly understood by nearly all practitioners. This book can help you begin to identify and support this population on your caseload more effectively.

If you are engaged with foster care or adoption, I think you will find the eye-popping statistics, review of caregiver challenges, and the push for understanding complex conditions essential to your work or support.

If you work in a business that supports or engages with the public, we think you will find the significant overlap between neurodevelopmental conditions like ADHD, autism, trauma, and FASD enlightening. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYC1MSMH

05/01/2026

Yes!! What CAPACITY is present?

At the 2026 FASD Conference in Seattle there were people with living experience speaking throughout the day. On one occasion the person speaking explained his struggle with outbursts and behaviors. He went on to say, "it's not a control issue, it's capacity issue". It was so very clear to me at that moment, we really do need to listen, really listen to the people who know FASD best. The people who have it. Thank you to everyone involved with the conference, but particularly to our youth and adults with living experience.

If anyone can identify the young man, please do, I would like to give him credit. He had what I remember as an Irish accent and dark brown hair.

Identified: Jacob Casson-Rennie from County Clare, Ireland. FASD Ireland

04/30/2026

04/29/2026

04/29/2026

Today we are continuing the conversation about common diagnoses among kids in foster care.

We talk a lot about trauma when it comes to kids in foster care, but there’s something else that is just as real and far less talked about.

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder

FASD is one of the most common and most underdiagnosed conditions among children in foster care.

And the hard truth is… we often don’t even know it’s there.

There isn’t always a confirmed history.
There isn’t always a clear diagnosis.
And many of the behaviors get labeled as something else.

ADHD.
ODD.
Defiance.
“Just not trying hard enough.”

When people think about FASD, they often picture very specific facial features.

A smooth area between the nose and upper lip.
A thinner upper lip.
Smaller eye openings.
A large forehead.

And while those markers can be part of it, only a small percentage of children with FASD actually have them.

Most don’t.

Which means many kids are walking around with brain-based differences that no one can see and no one is recognizing.

So what we may actually be seeing is a brain that was impacted before birth.

A brain that processes information differently.
Struggles with impulse control.
Has difficulty with memory, cause and effect, and regulation.

So what shows up on the outside can look like:

Not following directions
Repeating the same mistakes
Impulsivity
Big reactions
Difficulty connecting actions to consequences

And it can be incredibly confusing for caregivers, because traditional parenting strategies often don’t work the way we expect them to.

This is not about willful behavior.

It’s about neurological differences.

And just like with trauma, understanding the “why” changes how we respond.

FASD is common.
It is often unrecognized.
And it deserves more attention than it gets.

Because when we miss it, we risk responding in ways that don’t actually help the child in front of us.

And these kids deserve to be understood. 💙

04/28/2026

Parent Coaching | CPRT & Family Support

Learn tools to strengthen your connection with your child. Our parent coaching in Hays, KS includes CPRT and emotion-focused support for caregivers.

04/28/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/1Cj8cd1LWj/
I heard the words "lying" and "manipulation" so much the past few weeks to describe kids/individuals with FASD and ADHD. When did children become criminals and believed to be purposely engaged in wrongdoing with undeveloped brains, underdeveloped social and emotional understanding and others with NO understanding of the conditions and how they manifest in certain contexts assigned as judge and jury.. who usually dismiss those of us who actually get it/live it?

Support starts with recognizing what’s happening beneath the surface. Confabulation is different from dishonesty.

04/27/2026

This talks about courage, but what it fails to fully bring to light is how often parents or other adults in authority ask questions that can engage the nervous system in fight, flight, freeze, fawn or faint survival states, resulting in immediate distrust if done in a "gotcha" attempt or when kids lack all the information to answer the question due to executive dysfunction and "I don't know" isn't acceptable. Hence the "lie" or the "confabulation". This speaks to how important it is to recognize what your actual "connection privelege" is with a kid when asking a question. Better yet, learn how to obtain answers without asking questions at all. If there is one skill I would advise learning, besides your own emotional regulation, its how to reflect and/or reframe.