7 Myths About Child Mental Health:
MYTH 1: A child with a psychiatric disorder is damaged for life.
A psychiatric disorder is by no means an indication of a child’s potential for future happiness and fulfillment. The most important thing to remember here is that early intervention can be very effective at preventing chronic, debilitating conditions.
MYTH 2: Psychiatric problems result from personal weakness.
It can be difficult to separate the symptoms of a child’s psychiatric disorder—impulsive behavior, aggressiveness, or extreme shyness, for example—from a child’s character. But a psychiatric disorder is an illness, just like diabetes or leukemia is not a personality type.
MYTH 3: Psychiatric disorders result from bad parenting.
While a child’s home environment and relationships with his parents can exacerbate a psychiatric disorder, these things don’t cause the disorder. Parenting isn’t to blame. But parents play a central role in a child’s recovery. They provide support and care that is crucial to their child’s treatment plan and future development.
MYTH 4: A child can manage a psychiatric disorder through willpower.
The key word here is disorder. A disorder is not mild anxiety or a dip in mood. It is severe distress and dysfunction that can affect all areas of a child’s life. A heartbreaking number of parents resist mental health services for their children because they fear the stigma attached to diagnoses or see psychiatrists as pill pushers. This is incredibly sad because kids don’t have the skills and life experience to manage conditions as overwhelming as depression, anxiety, or ADHD. They can benefit profoundly from the right treatment plan, which usually includes a type of behavioral therapy, and have their health and happiness restored.
MYTH 5: Therapy for kids is a waste of time.
Today’s best evidence-based treatment programs for children and teens use a cognitive-behavioral therapy model that focuses on changing the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are causing them serious problems. This is solution-driven therapy, and it’s a key component of some of the most exciting and innovative new treatment plans for kids.
MYTH 6: Children are overmedicated.
Medication is not the norm. Approximately 20 percent of children and teens in America have psychiatric issues at any one time; only 5 percent of them take medication. We never doubt whether a child with diabetes or a seizure disorder should get medication; we should take psychiatric illness just as seriously. The larger problem is that millions of children who suffer from serious psychiatric problems never receive any help.
MYTH 7: Children grow out of mental health problems.
Most mental health problems left untreated in childhood become more difficult to treat in adulthood. Since we know that most psychiatric disorders emerge before a child’s 14th birthday, we should have huge incentive to screen young people for emotional and behavioral problems. We can then coordinate interventions while a child’s brain is most responsive to change and treatment is more likely to be successful. Left untreated, disorders often lead to substance abuse, difficulties with relationships and work, and brushes with the law.
Adapted from: http://www.childmind.org/en/posts/articles/2010-11-8-7-myths-about-child-mental-health
ReplyDeleteIt is not just the mental health system that has to change, but the education system. Children who have experienced both Trauma or trauma, are referred to mental health because of their behavior in school. Treatment is to meet the educators' needs, not the child or the family. Many hands get tied that way. If medication is postponed with therapy only, and the behavior doesn't improve quickly enough, the child is at risk of placement anyway.......Our major public institution where children spend most of their days, is not equipped to respond to symptoms that manifest as behaviors. Everything is labeled defiance and treated with punishment. It is a tragedy of epic proportion.
GE 3S