Psychological Problems of Childhood

Psychological Problems of Childhood

It's easy to know when your child has a fever. A child's mental health problem may be harder to identify, but you can learn to recognize the symptoms. Pay attention to excessive anger, fear, sadness or anxiety. Sudden changes in your child's behavior can tip you off to a problem. So can behaviors like exercising too much, or hurting or destroying things.

Some common mental health problems in children are

Depression
Anxiety
Behavior disorders
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Mental health problems can disrupt daily life at home, at school or in the community. Without help, mental health problems can lead to school failure, alcohol or other drug abuse, family discord, violence or even suicide. However, help is available. Talk to your health care provider if you have concerns about your child's behavior.

Many psychological disorders first diagnosed in children involve physiological and/or genetic components. However, there are many other psychological disorders found in children without any physical causes. Disorders caused by physiological or biological problems are more likely to be identified early in life, but some of these problems are not identified until adulthood.

Mental retardation, learning disorders, communication skills disorders and pervasive developmental disorders (such as autistic disorder) appear to have biological components. Some psychologists specialize in the identification and treatment of these disorders, but they are not frequently encountered in a general psychological practice because of the need for specialized training and treatment. Therefore, they will not be discussed here. Elimination disorders are encountered in general psychological practice, but are typically seen as a symptomatic expression of other psychological problems.

They will also not be discussed here.

Attention-deficit disorder and disruptive behavior disorders are quite common, and treatment is provided by psychologists to both children and parents to assist in managing these problems. Dr. franklin provides treatment for Attention-deficit hyperactive disorders, oppositional disorder and conduct disorders. These problems will be addressed here.

Separation anxiety is also described here. This problem is distinct from the other anxiety disorders, because it applies exclusively to children and adolescents. Separation anxiety also occurs frequently after some emotional stress or trauma, such as relocation or divorce, so the problem may also be connected to life stress issues frequently treated in private practice. It also occurs more frequently in children whose mothers have been diagnosed with panic disorder.

This may suggest a biological component, or it may suggest that separation anxiety can be a psychosocial byproduct of the panic disorder in the parent. This problem is relatively common, and is usually treated by psychologists after the child has encountered adjustment problems with peers or in school.

More than 2% of our children are considered to be mentally retarded. In order to understand retardation, we need to look a little at the concept of intelligence. We define intelligence as "general cognitive ability," meaning how well a person can solve problems, how easily they learn new things, and how quickly they can see relationships among things.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is the score you get on an intelligence test. Originally, it was a quotient (a ratio): IQ= MA/CA x 100, where MA is mental age and CA is chronological age.

So a child who is 10 and has the same level of intellectual ability as most 10 year olds has an IQ of 10/10 x 100 = 100. If that 10 year old has the same ability as a 15 year old, his IQ will be 15/10 x 100 = 150 (very smart indeed). If the 10 year old has the ability of a 5 year old, his IQ would be 5/10 x 100 = 50, which is considered mentally retarded.
Nowadays, IQ is a matter of comparing a person with many others of the same age, and assigning a score based on their place on a normal curve:

Here you get to see several important points about not only IQ but about descriptive statistics.

1. The normal curve, also called the bell-shaped curve, is an idealized version of what happens in many large sets of measurements: Most measurements fall in the middle, and fewer fall at points farther away from the middle. Here, most people score near 100 (the average), and much fewer people score very high or very low.

2. The mean is just the average of all scores. The sum of everyone’s IQ scores, divided by the number of scores, is the mean, which was originally set at 100. That has become the tradition.

3. The standard deviation (sd). The standard deviation is like the average degree to which scores deviate from the mean. For our purposes, just know that 1 standard deviation above and below the mean contains (in an ideal normal curve!) 68% of all the scores, 2 standard deviations contain 95.6%, and 3 standard deviations contain 99.7%. Or, you could say that there are only 2.2% above 130 and 2.2% below 70, and so on. By tradition, one standard deviation is 15 points. The percentages you see in the normal curve above are based on 10 point spreads: 10 points above or below the mean (90 to 110) contains 50% of all the scores.
The names for various "smart" people are of relatively little importance to us. But the differences among retarded people can be very significant. Please understand that the ranges are approximations, and labeling people is always a difficult and dangerous thing!

0 - 20: profound mental retardation - these folks will likely need nursing care their entire lives.

20 - 35: severe mental retardation - these people can learn to talk and develop basic hygiene habits.

35 - 50: moderate mental retardation - they can achieve as much as a second grade education (e.g. learning to read and count change, etc.), but will likely need sheltered care.

50 - 70: mild mental retardation - these people can achieve the equivalent of a sixth grade education, be self-supporting and have a partially independent life.

Basically, mental retardation is believed to be a matter of some sort of damage to the brain.

There are many factors that can lead to that kind of damage:

heredity (e.g. Downs syndrome)

embryonic problems (e.g. fetal alcohol syndrome, rubella...)

birth complications (anoxia, infection)

childhood medical conditions (infections, traumas, lead poisoning)

neglect and abuse

other psychological disorders that involve neurological impairment (e.g. autism)

An interesting question to ask is: If being below, say, 50 is due to "brain damage," what do we say about people above, say, 150? Are they "brain enhanced?" Or do they have a different, more beneficial sort of "brain damage?"