Mental Health
Mental health is how people think, feel, and act as they face life’s situations. It affects how people handle stress, relate to one another, and make decisions. Mental health influences the ways individuals look at themselves, their lives, and others in their lives. Like physical health, mental health is important at every stage of life. All aspects of our lives are affected by our mental health. Caring for and protecting our children is an obligation and is critical to their daily lives and their independence. When untreated, mental health disorders can lead to school failure, family conflicts, drug abuse, violence, and even suicide.
Mental health problems for children and adolescents refer to the range of all diagnosable emotional, behavioral, and mental disorders. They include depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, conduct, and eating disorders. Mental health problems affect 1 in every 5 young people at any given time (NIH, 1999). Serious emotional disturbances for children and adolescents refer to the above disorders when they severely disrupt daily functioning in home, school, or community. Serious disturbance affects one in every 10 young people at any given time (NIH, 1999). In my research paper, I will discuss some types of mental health disorders in children, the causes, the signs, and treatments.
Mental Health Disorders
Mental disorders must be considered within the context of the family and peers, school, home, and community. Taking the social-cultural environment into consideration is essential to understanding mental disorders in children and adolescents, as it is in adults. However, the changing nature of these environments, coupled with the progressively unfolding processes of brain development, makes the emphasis on context, as well as development, more complex and more central in child mental health (Jensen & Hoagwood, 1997).
Today, people believed that mental disorders occur in childhood and...