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Tag Archives: adolescents
Including kids and teens with mental illness at church…Grasping the relationship barrier
The kids and families we serve in our child and adolescent psychiatry practice are extremely vulnerable to a vicious cycle of escalating social isolation, perpetuated by the nature of the conditions they experience, their propensity to misinterpret the thoughts and reactions of other people and the stigma associated with mental illness. Continue reading
When do the effects of trauma cross the line into PTSD?
Kids with PTSD are more likely to have Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Separation Anxiety Disorder, males with PTSD are more likely to have concomitant substance use disorders and Conduct Disorder, with depressive, bipolar, anxiety and substance use disorders occurring more commonly among adults with PTSD. Continue reading
Posted in Mental Health, PTSD
Tagged adolescents, children, children's ministry, Key Ministry, mental health, PTSD, signs, symptoms, trauma
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Trauma and Kids…a look at the numbers
The National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence was a Federally-funded survey of 4,549 children between the ages of 0-17, conducted during 2008. Here are some of the key findings…
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Posted in Advocacy, Hidden Disabilities, Inclusion, PTSD
Tagged adolescents, children, children's ministry, Key Ministry, NIMH, PTSD, Resources, statistics, trauma, youth ministry
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The DSM-5: Will kids with mental illness be abandoned in an evidence-based world?
The tragic flaw in the DSM-5 is that the new diagnostic criteria have been declared “dead on arrival” by the leaders of the organization positioned to fund the research necessary to direct clinical care. Continue reading
Posted in Advocacy, Families, Hidden Disabilities, Key Ministry, Mental Health
Tagged adolescents, children, dsm-5, mental illness, research
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DSM-5: Emphasis on the EPISODIC nature of Bipolar Disorder in kids
During the latter decades of the 20th century, this contention by researchers that severe, nonepisodic irritability is a manifestation of pediatric mania coincided with an upsurge in the rates at which clinicians assigned the diagnosis of bipolar disorder to their pediatric patients. This sharp increase in rates appears to be attributable to clinicians combining at least two clinical presentations into a single category. That is, both classic, episodic presentations of mania and non-episodic presentations of severe irritability have been labeled as bipolar disorder in children. In DSM-5, the term bipolar disorder is explicitly reserved for episodic presentations of bipolar symptoms.
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Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for kids with depression…pros and cons
The kids I treat are prone to what one of our therapists refers to as “stinking thinking”…automatic, irrational thoughts pop into their heads in the course of day-to- day living that trigger negative emotions and lead to patterns of self-defeating behavior. These patterns of self-defeating behaviors often reinforce their cognitive misperceptions and lead to a downward spiral resulting in symptoms of anxiety, depression, and sometimes, suicidal thoughts or plans. Continue reading
Depression…Challenges in serving kids with an episodic disability
The first people in a church likely to suspect a problem will be the youth pastor or a small group leader when they notice an often abrupt change in the pattern of involvement of a teen suffering from depression. Unlike the other conditions we’ve discussed since launching the blog, in the absence of another mental health condition or a parent with a disability, I’d hypothesize kids with depression wouldn’t be any less likely to start attending church…they’ll have difficulty staying involved with church once symptomatic. Continue reading
Kids and Depression…What Does the Data Say?
Suicidal thinking and behavior is very common among youth with depression. Approximately 60% of teens diagnosed with depression will experience thoughts of suicide…30% have made one or more suicide attempts. Continue reading
What do kids and teens with depression look like?
Today, we’ll help readers develop a mental picture of what they might notice in a child or teen experiencing an episode of Major Depression. Continue reading
Depression…Definitions matter
The purpose of this series will be to help pastors, church staff, volunteers and Christian parents improve their ability to recognize the signs and symptoms of depression and children and teens and help them to most effectively support kids with depression and their families. Here’s a tentative outline of some of the topics we’ll be covering in the series… Continue reading
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