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Category Archives: Mental Health
Hot Topics: Should Christian Parents Seek Out Christian Mental Health Professionals?
Effective treatment of your child’s mental health condition can often reduce or remove significant barriers to spiritual growth. Unfortunately, parents may find it far easier to find someone to fix their kid than finding someone to fix the attitudes demonstrated toward persons experiencing mental illness at their church. Continue reading
Hot Topics: When Should You Fire Your Child’s Mental Health Professional?
What are some of the signs parents should look for when they’re concerned that they’re not in the right place for their child with a mental health disorder? Continue reading
Posted in Controversies, Families, Mental Health
Tagged adolescents, children, counseling, mental health, psychiatry, psychology, When to end treatment
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Obstacles Families Face in Finding Mental Health Care For Kids
Parents of kids with significant mental health disorders frequently experience great frustration in negotiating the confusing maze that constitutes our system of mental health care in many communities across the U.S., along with the yet more confusing (intentionally?) system of paying for needed care. Quite frequently, pastors and ministry leaders are trusted resources to parents of children or teens in crisis, and my own professional society encourages parents who are looking for help for their kids to seek recommendations from their spiritual leaders. This post seeks to help ministry leaders better appreciate common challenges families face in finding the proper help for their kids, and offer some resources to share with parents looking for help.
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Posted in Families, Hidden Disabilities, Key Ministry, Mental Health, Parents, Resources
Tagged AACAP, access, adolescents, children, church, Facts For Families, families, mental health, NAMI
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Hot Topics: Is Antipsychotic Medication Safe for Kids?
Among the classes of medication commonly used for kids and teens with mental health disorders, I’m most concerned about the potential long-term safety risks associated with the use of antipsychotics.
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Hot Topics: What’s Causing the Epidemic of Mental Illness in Kids?
As a child and adolescent psychiatrist, I frequently encounter parents and skeptics who freely share their opinions that much of the reported crisis in children’s mental health is fabricated…a marketing scheme of the pharmaceutical industry, a consequence of poor parenting or misplaced priorities on the part of families.
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Hot Topics: Are Antidepressant Medications Safe For Kids?
Few topics in child and adolescent mental health have generated as much controversy over the last decade as the debate about the safety of antidepressant medication given to kids. In 2004, the FDA issued a “black box” warning claiming that antidepressant use in children and teenagers is associated with increases in suicidal thinking and behavior, which was expanded in 2007 to include adults between the ages of 18 and 24. In my opinion, the larger controversy about antidepressant use in children and teens is not “are they safe?” but “do they work?” and if they work, what do they work for? Some of those questions were addressed here.
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Hot Topics: New Data on Foster Kids and Medication
The proportion of children in foster care who were prescribed psychotropic drugs remained much higher than all Medicaid-‐enrolled children. Continue reading
Hot Topics: Money and Children’s Mental Health: An Insurance Parable
We’ll kick off Children’s Mental Health Week by focusing on the challenges families face when seeking to access services for their kids through their health insurance benefits. Continue reading
How Money Influences Children’s Mental Health Care…The 15 Minute Medication Visit
Today’s post looking at financial practices influencing children’s mental health care is the second in a series on Hot Topics in Children’s Mental Health we’re offering in recognition of Mental Health Month, National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week (May 6-12), … Continue reading
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