A rehabilitation technique based on normal neurological development, taking the individual through the developmental process using reflex patterns encoded in the central nervous system. Doman-Delacato Treatment Procedures.

Neurorehabilitation: repairing brains through experience.

Offers the Doman Delacato treatment protocol. A nonprofit educational organization that serves children by introducing parents to the field of child brain development. learn how the brain grows and how to speed that growth in their child.

The Doman method is based upon incorrect knowledge of the brain and the unverified assumption that people with brain damage can be cured by continuous exercise and stimulation termed patterning.

Offers a neurological evaluation for the purpose of creating a home-based developmental program that addresses causes of dysfunction. Derives from Doman-Delacato Treatment Procedures.

IAHP differs from other groups treating developmental problems in the excessive nature of their poorly documented claims for cure, and the major demands placed on parents in unswervingly carrying out an unproven technique to the smallest detail.

The line which sharply demarcates mainstream medicine from alternative medicine is the line of science. It is possible to cross that line, however. Any alternative treatment which is tested in a rigorous scientific manner and found to be safe and effective, will be incorporated into mainstream medicine, it will have crossed the line. A therapy, on the other hand, which begins within the halls of mainstream medicine as a legitimate proposal, and is found, when tested scientifically, to be of no real value, will be discarded. Most such discarded therapies are destined to become forgotten footnotes in the annals of medical research. Some, however, are salvaged by practitioners of alternative medicine. These therapies have crossed the line in the other direction, descending from science into pseudoscience. The method of psychomotor patterning for the treatment of mental deficiencies is one such therapy. It began 30 years ago as a legitimate, if incorrect, scientific concept for a new treatment modality for mental retardation, brain injury, learning disabilities, and other cognitive maladies. The method was subjected to controlled trials and found to be of no value. It was debated in the scientific literature up until the early 1970's, when finally the medical community arrived at the consensus that patterning should be discarded as a false concept with no therapeutic role. Use of the techniques of patterning, however, has not died, as we will see.

The Doman-Delacato patterning technique is pseudoscience because it is premised on a bankrupt and discarded theory and, more importantly, has failed to demonstrate any significant effectiveness under controlled conditions.

A delineation of the significant stages of child brain development through which children pass as they progress from birth to six years.

Patterning treatment offers no special merit. Claims remain unproved. Demands and expectations placed on families are so great that financial resources may be depleted substantially and parental and sibling relationships could be stressed.