Readers of Domestic Disturbances, the online column Ms. Warner wrote for The New York Times until December, will be familiar with what happened next. She sallied forth to interview all the pushy parents, irresponsible doctors and overmedicated children she could find  and lo, she could barely find any. After several years of dead ends, missed deadlines and worried soul-searching, she was forced to reconsider her premise and start all over again.

“We’ve Got Issues” is the product of that unusual cycle. Journalists who cobble together enough anecdotes to support a preset agenda are all too common, and presumably Ms. Warner could have managed to do just that. Instead, she actually let her research guide her thoughts: it whirled her perspective a full 180 degrees and, as she would be the first to affirm, lifted the scales from her eyes.

“A couple of simple truths have become clear,” she writes with the passion of a new convert. “That the suffering of children with mental health issues (and their parents) is very real. That almost no parent takes the issue of psychiatric diagnosis lightly or rushes to ‘drug’ his or her child; and that responsible child psychiatrists don’t, either. And that many children’s lives are essentially saved by medication, particularly when it’s combined with evidence-based forms of therapy.”

How could she have been so convinced otherwise? Half the book is rueful legwork devoted to answering that question.

Image Credit... William P. O'Donnell/The New York Times

Ms. Warner points out that she was hardly alone in her previous assumptions: it is accepted wisdom in some circles, including, oddly, liberal-left “moms” and right-wing radio audiences, that the milder variants of attention deficit disorder, bipolar disorder and autism are just different ways of saying “normal, but not good enough.”