Are Child and Adolescent Mental Health Concerns Widespread?
Child And Adolescent Mental Health Issues Are Not as Common as People Think.
The mental health professionals in the United States of America would have people believe the mental illness is widespread in children.
Child and adolescent mental health issues are not however, prevalent in society today, they tend to be blown out of proportion.
What is more common in children and adolescents is the use of drugs, by self report, over half of the teenagers in America admit to having tried illegal drugs.
The use of drugs can frequently have effects which mimic the symptoms of mental illnesses.
More so, the over diagnosis of things disorders such as ADHD will skew the statistics and even with the over diagnosis of ADHD, less than five kids out of a hundred are diagnosed with it.
According to aacap.org, the between ten and fifteen percent of children and adolescents will exhibit symptoms of depression at any given time.
The symptoms of depression are not indicative of a person has depression, it just means that they are dealing with something which has affected them in a saddening way.
Additionally, the site stated that of the children who experience major depression, one of every fourteen will commit suicide as a young adult.
Awareness
False Facts
Child and adolescent mental health issues are not highly common. People can make statistics show anything which they want to show. Statistics can be written in away to support any data.
For instance, it sounds much better and shows better results to say 13 of every fourteen kids with depression do not commit suicide.
More so, why are the kids experiencing depression? Are they coming off of drug use? The use of drugs shows symptoms of mental illness, especially with withdrawal.
Often times, people will commit suicide during the withdrawal period of drug use, if that is when they are experiencing the depression, these factors cannot be written off as mental illness.
Also, the facts are skewed in child and adolescent mental health in that they site each disorder percentages, while children with one diagnosis are likely to have another.
The facts look much more appalling when the diagnoses are laid out individually. If you add up all the numbers of individual diagnoses, it appears the every kid is suffering from something.
Counseling
Child and adolescent mental health issues are not rampant, but the kids do often need help.
The help the children need is often taken care through simply talking to someone about what they are dealing with. Parents need to not be afraid to seek counseling help for their children.
Counseling may alleviate much of what children and adolescents are struggling with, including drug use. The use of qualified Master’s degree level counselors is important when children need to talk.
It is also important so that they do not get labeled with a diagnosis which they do not have.