Psychological and Developmental Disorders of Children, Essay Example

Attention Deficit Disorder

Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) describe behavior patterns that may appear in school aged children. Such children often exhibit traits of being over impulsive and inattentive. The other aspect is that of Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) where children seem unable to settle down and exhibit signs of extreme restlessness. These symptoms are essentially neurological disturbances that can interfere with the child’s learning ability. Children can demonstrate a wide range of emotional responses to this type of disorder and it is important that the child receives appropriate remedial treatment.

The consequences can lead to adverse social problems of the child and may result in the child being mocked or bullied. This can have further consequences in lowering the self-esteem of the child and create a sense of social insecurity. This may equally result in anger with the parents where the symptoms are not understood. These causes need to be explored with the family doctor but the first immediate step is to reduce the stress levels of the child. Consultation will often involve working with a psychiatrist and sociologist to explore whether there are social or emotional problems that are giving rise to the condition.

Once appropriate diagnosis has taken place the physician will select an appropriate treatment option for the child. Given the right treatment option the child has a good chance of growing up to be a normal adult. The child will need professional help and support in order to overcome the problems. For worried parents Doctors can provide information on appropriate assessment centers where children can be formally evaluated for ADD/ADHD disorders. These assessments can then be an appropriate starting point for the physician to discuss remedial treatment options with the parents.

Child Conduct Problems

Child conduct disorder refers to that of behavioral and emotional problems found in young children. This is identified by children that have difficulties in following rules and instructions from their teacher. This often manifests itself in unacceptable ways like that of bullying, being insolent and acting in a juvenile delinquent manner. This is often the first sign of mental illness and potential neurological disorders.

It is important that children who are exhibiting these behavioral problems are subject to formal psychological assessment. Many of the associated disorders are capable of being treated and as such early diagnosis is important. There are often co-existing problems and typically these have found to be associated with substance abuse, anxiety or stress, mood disorders and depression. Many of those children that display these symptoms need to have formal treatment programs otherwise they are in danger of not maturing into adult life.

The treatment options can be both complex and challenging. This is because in most of the more severe cases the child does not trust adults or authority and often seen to be breaking the law and conducting themselves in an anti-social manner. This can make behavior modification difficult. For those children with learning disabilities there may need to be a special education program and this may include the need for medication. Treatment options are mostly long term and the earlier symptoms are diagnosed the more successful the treatment options are. Treatment options often include a combination of Home based, school based and community based help options. Specialist psychiatric help may be appropriate for the more complex cases.

Anxiety Disorder

Anxiety disorders are a common problem that is experienced by most children through their school lives. Anxiety disorders are considered to be the most common of all mental health related problems. Statistics indicate that some 1:10 people suffer from some sort of anxiety related problem. These are for the main part a type of illness that can be treated. They are essentially groups of disorders that can have a profound impact on health, thought and emotions. It is common for people to have issues with more than one type of anxiety disorder and this can be combinations like that of substance abuse, depression and eating disorder.

Early signs that manifest themselves in children are as follows:-

• Panic Disorder – the occurrence of so called ‘panic attacks’ that invoke short feelings of terror. This may be shortness of breath, heart palpitations, abdominal pains, feeling of dizziness or that of death. These can happen without notice and may be signs of early neurological problems;
• Phobias – These are classified as two forms i.e. Social Phobia, where there is a fear of social situations and that of specific phobias like fear of heights, confined spaces, sight of blood etc;
• Post-Traumatic Stress – Results from being exposed to a terrifying ordeal or experience. Mostly associated with soldiers from battle situations but equally could be from experiencing being run over by a car, being involved in a car or rail crash etc. Causes are flashbacks, anger, depression and heightened stress;
• Obsession Compulsive disorder – The need to obsess over trivial situations or compulsions; items like leaving a light switched on etc.

Mood Disorders

It is considered that mood disorders impact around 10% of the population. It is the so termed “highs” and “lows” that we associate with temperament. Those diagnosed with mood disorders however tend to have more prolonged and intense periods of mood swings. One of the most common forms is that of depression that results in “lows” from experiencing feelings of hopelessness, constant tiredness and in severe cases the contemplation of suicide. Manic depressives can go from the lows to that of exalted feelings of high where the person starts to demonstrate reckless behavior.

Essentially this is a mental health condition and may result in bi-polar disorder. Medication is now available as a maintenance treatment for those with bipolar disorder. Research has shown that a high proportion of patients do not comply with the treatment. Clinicians believe that there is a need for ‘psychoeducation’ in order to explain the importance of maintaining medication. Many patients find it difficult to accept that they have a mental or psychological illness. This causes them to rebel against the treatment program.

Impulse controls have been accepted as a psychiatric disorder that results from illnesses like bipolar disorder. This often leads to acts of violent behavior “The diagnosis is a psychiatric condition. The act that results from the disorder is often a criminal behavior. Research in children or young adults shown that substance abuse was a common factor with those diagnosed with bipolar disorders. The research discovered that those patients suffering from acute depression showed considerable more signs of anger and violent tendencies. The use of Prozac that increases the Serontonin levels in the brain was seen to reduce the anger and violent tendencies.

Intellectual Disability

This type of disability normally falls under the following types of challenges in intellectual processing:

• Abstraction;
• Sequencing;
• Understanding different social contexts;
• Reading emotional states of others

In general terms those people with intellectual disabilities have difficulty with information processing. And as such this may impact the efficiency of memory, ability to solve problems, inability to plan and potential cognitive issues. The definition can vary widely but in general terms the illness is related to restriction of cognitive abilities and the ability to cope with the functions in daily life. Physicians have categorized these into mild, moderate, severe and profound categories. Mild disability has been linked to an IQ score of 55-75.

In consideration of children the condition is usually hereditary and one the child is born with. Equally it can be acquired through disease or accident. Some have tried to associate this with autism but in around 50% of all cases the cause is unknown. The intellectual disability cuts across all ethnic groups and is not limited to education or economic / social conditions like poverty. Another common factor associated with this disability is that of impaired vision and hearing. Further, a range of mental health problems are evident and this is sometimes referred to as duel diagnosis

Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism is regarded as an illness of mental disorder linked to genetic disposition . McGill University in Canada conducted research that linked autism in children to that of early births. Research concluded that of the sample studies almost 25% of the sample had autism that was linked to premature births. They also concluded that the weights of the babies were another factor with low birth weights of 3.3 pounds or lower increasing the risk of autism A leading specialist in New York argued that the findings are still relatively premature and would need to be validated by conducting similar research on larger sample sizes.

Research indicated that the prevalence of autism was not skewed by race or ethnicity. This however was not aligned to a number of other recent research studies that found a higher prevalence in black as opposed to white children. The research did indicate that more boys had autism than that of girls and this was of the ratio 4:1. An interesting point was that 70% of the children identified had more than 1 diagnostic evaluation confirming autism. School records provided a main source of data however some restriction of availability of data limited the research in that area.

Those children that are considered to be suffering from autism disorders also have mild to severe mental retardation. Some children function relatively well but the more severe cases the children virtually live in their own world. If the illness is left untreated then the symptoms will compound in complexity and become difficult to treat. Treatment approaches have included behavioral analysis techniques (ABA) and that of intense behavioral intervention (IBI). Both of these treatment have attracted a degree of controversy because of the expensive cost of treatment.