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Mental Health

Background

Mental health and mental health problems are not exact terms. But the components of mental health can broadly be said to include the following: the ability to develop socially, emotionally and intellectually; the ability to initiate and sustain mutually satisfying relationships; the ability to empathise with others; and the ability to learn from periods of emotional difficulty and distress, and to develop because of them. Defined in this way mental health, rather than physical health, is something of an ideal state.

Mental health problems are difficulties which arise in these areas, and are likely to have their roots in constitutional, environmental or social factors, or a combination of these. Such problems cover a wide spectrum of emotional and behavioural difficulties which vary significantly in their severity and duration. At one end of the spectrum, mental health problems in children may be relieved by the love and support or families and other carers without the need for intervention from a mental health professional. At the other end of the spectrum, mental or psychiatric disorders suggest the existence of a clinically recognisable set of symptoms or behaviour in accordance with the standards set out in the World Health Organisation's International Classification of diseases (ICD10) which means that children are likely to need specialist help.

Doctors have become more aware recently of a number of situations that leave children vulnerable and many of them with mental health problems. Children who have a parent with a mental health problem are one such group. If a parent has a major psychiatric illness, they may experience disruptions of carer and place. Each admission of the parent may mean they go to grandparents or into foster care unless there is a partner to keep them. Parents with their own troubled backgrounds including abuse and neglect may have personality disorder and often children in these families receive inconsistent and unpredictable parenting that leaves them troubled. Depressed parents can be emotionally preoccupied, unavailable to their child and often these children have considerable difficulties. Parents may also be using a range of substances, alcohol, cocaine, heroin that at times leave them unable to function as parents, the child may be ignored or left, in the overwhelming need to obtain their substance and there may be little money left for the practical care of the child.

What are the cause? View What are the cause?

Medical text written February 1997 by Dr J Trowell. Last updated November 2005 by Professor J Trowell, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Director of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services Research Team, University of Worcester, Worcester, UK.

 

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