Evidence-Based Practice with Emotionally Troubled Children and Adolescents

by Morley D. Glicken

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Author: Morley D. Glicken

Publisher: Academic Press

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 0323163505
ISBN 13: 978-0323163507

At a time when increasing numbers of children are being treated for emotional problems, naming and treating those problems remains more of an art than a science often leaving children and their parents to navigate a confusing path. One reason for this uncertainty is that we have few objective ways of assessing a child's emotional difficulties other than judgments based on interviews and checklists of symptoms. Unlike most adults, however, young children are often unable or unwilling to talk about their symptoms, leaving mental health professionals to rely on observation and information from parents and teachers that may be incorrect or biased. Furthermore, children develop so quickly that what looks like attention deficit disorder in the fall may look like anxiety or nothing at all in the summer. Although the mental health field has made great strides in helping children manage mental illness, particularly moderate conditions, the system of diagnosis is still '200 to 300 years behind other branches of medicine' according Dr. E. Jane Costello, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University. Dr. Costello and other experts believe that the search for a diagnosis is often a process of trial and error that may end with serious errors in diagnosis and treatment. According to government surveys at least six million American children have difficulties that are diagnosed as serious mental disorders, a number that has tripled since the early 1990s even though one of the largest continuing surveys of mental illness in children, tracking 4,500 children ages 9 to 13, found no cases of full-blown bi-polar disorder and only a few children with the mild flights of excessive energy that could be considered nascent bipolar disorder. Moreover, the symptoms diagnosed as serious emotional problems in children often bear little resemblance to those in adults. Instead, children's moods often flip on and off through

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Adolescent Psychology

Evidence-Based Practice with Emotionally Troubled Children and Adolescents