Children’s Mental Health is an essential part of children’s overall health. It has an interactive relationship with their physical health, according to emotional, cognitive, social, and their biologic development.
Children have the right to have a good mental health status. They deserve to live up to their full potential, succeed in school, engage with healthy relationships, and live healthy lives filled with positive experiences.
Although clinical research has contributed to the development of more effective treatment and prevention of mental health disorders, there are many factors that can impact a child’s mental health status.
Many children are at risk of developing a disorder due to risk factors in their biology or genetics. Some other children have to deal with a childhood that is filled with anger, resentment, hatred, distrust, and constant negativity. Children exposed to these circumstances have difficult time in coping with their emotions. These children tend to have a lower self-worth, negative feelings, perform poorly in school, and later become involved in unhealthy lifestyle decisions.
These experiences combined with environmental factors will usually make them excellent candidates for developing mental health problems.
Mental health disorders affecting children may include: anxiety disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorders, bipolar disorder, depression, eating disorders, schizophrenia and other forms of mental health complaints.
At Lifeworks we provide children and their families professional help with psychological support to allow them to overcome many of the issues that affect them, improve their mental health status and live a more promising life.
We work with compassion, trust, and understanding at the following levels:
- Children assessment for behavioural or emotional problems;
- Individual therapy or counselling for children with mental health disorders;
- Assisted learning programs aimed at improving children school performance;
- Parent education on the needs of children at each stage of development;
- Strategies for teachers for effective classroom management;
- Monitor of treatment progress.
Mental health problems in childhood may vary across different kind. They may imply:
- Changes in appetite or sleep patterns;
- Fearful behaviours toward things the child normally is not afraid of;
- Returning to earlier pattern of behaviours such as bed-wetting
- Social isolation, sadness or tearfulness;
- Self-destructive behaviours (head-banging, or a tendency to get hurt often)
- Repeated thoughts of death.
There are psychological therapies that can be very effective in helping the child and the family members to encourage behavioural changes sometimes in combination with medications. An effective example is a behavioural parent management training or systemic family therapy in combination with CBT for the child.