Mental illness is similar to physical illness. As our kids get fever, cough, diarrhea, there can also be some Emotional Disorders in children. When your child is showing abnormal, impulsive, or anxious behavior, you should be alarmed. Sometimes, it is part of the typical behavioral development of your child. Still, when this type of anxiety and impulsiveness is long-term and repeatedly showing by your child, then it is of grave concern, and you should think of it as an emotional disorder.
Types of Emotional Disorders in Children:
There are different types of childhood disorders regarding a child’s mental and emotional health.
Child Mental Disorders’ list:
- Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD
- Conduct Disorder.
- Oppositional Defiant Disorder
- Trauma
- Depression
- Anxiety Disorder
- Bipolar disorder
- Autism spectrum disorder
- Learning disorder
Causes of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders in children:
Well, unlike physical disorders, mental illnesses cannot have a specific root cause. Various factors are leading to child and adolescent mental health disorders. These factors include brain disease, stress, malnutrition, heredity, family history, environment, and diet. Apart from all these factors, mental illnesses can be caused without a specific cause related to age, religion, race, or income.
Symptoms of Child mental disorders:
Ordinary childhood mental disorders are mainly not observed as a disorder; they are mostly taken as a normal response. These symptoms change with time as the child grows with age. These can be regarded as difficulty in learning and assessing things and playing and making friends in school. Children with emotional disorders mostly exhibit anxious social behaviors. Thus, these mental disorders are predominantly diagnosed later in school. Or after some years while some children remain undiagnosed with their mental illness.
Bipolar Disorder:
Bipolar disorder is a horrible condition. The patient exhibits severe and dramatic mood changes, from very anxious and loud behavior to unfortunate and hopeless low behavior, and then back to rage. There are extreme swings in the energy levels of the patient from high to typical energetic behavior.
Conduct behavior:
In simple words, children with conduct behavior are difficult or impossible to show respectful behavior. They do not follow the rules or given instructions. For example, they do not follow school rules; they are involved in destroying things, stealing things, hurting school fellows, and lying to their teachers.
Oppositional Defiant Disorder:
ODD can be explained as if your child is showing aggressive and hostile behavior towards parents and other authorized persons and siblings, and then this can be a sign of ODD. Your child can be easily frustrated and are always in a fight with siblings and friends. Diagnosis of ODD can be made after persistent hostile and antagonistic behavior of a child longer than six months. If ODD is kept ignored and undiagnosed, it can cause low confidence, low self-esteem, common or social behavior, difficulty in exhibiting friendly behavior. The patient may remain angry all the time.
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD):
As the name shows, the patient is exhibiting attention-deficit behavior, i.e., he is having difficulty paying attention to a particular work and keeping watching in a specific environment. Moreover, he exhibits hyperactive behavior, which means he cannot control his energy levels and impulses.
If your child has difficulty paying attention in his schoolwork or cannot focus on a straightforward task or a project, you should be concerned for his check-up and diagnosis. ADHD can lead to many challenges in completing tasks and achieving goals, thus limiting a person’s abilities and confidence.
How emotional disorders in children are diagnosed:
If you notice abnormal behavior in your child, you should consult a medical professional; mainly, a psychotherapist will help you with your child’s mental health.
A psychotherapist will assess your child through an assessment procedure. This procedure includes different protocols like;
- Observing your child’s behavior
- Asking some questions that will help to assess your child’s behavior. The psychotherapist may give your child a questionnaire with a child behavior disorder quiz. This will help him diagnose the disease.
- Asking some questions from the child’s parents, friends, and teachers.
Management of behavioral disorders of children:
- In mental illnesses, the patient’s treatment is started from the training of his parents or guardians or caretakers. The first step in managing behavioral disorders in children is the training of parents and caretakers regarding how to manage their child’s behavior and how to improve your child’s mental health.
- The second step is individual therapy of the patient by the psychotherapist. He will tell the patient about how to control his emotions and improve his behaviors.
- The doctor also contacts family members. They are also being trained and advised on how to interact with such a child. This will help improve the child’s behavior and interaction with his social circle.
- Some programs regarding his mental health should also be managed at his school that will help him improve and treat his mental illness.
- Medication is the last option in treating mental illnesses. It can support the treatment, but solely medication cannot cure the disorder.
The most critical aspect of managing behavioral disorders of a child or an adolescent is remaining calm and be patient. Keep hold of yourself and believe that one day your child will be delicate like others.
Where to contact:
First, you must know about your child’s disorder. You can consult DSM that is available as emotional and behavioral disorders pdf and childhood psychiatric disorders ppt. It will help you decide to consult a doctor. The next step is consulting a doctor, and a good one, Marham is the best platform that will allow you to connect with a psychiatrist and ask them for advice for your child. It will help you in treating your child’s mental disorders in the most reliable and faster way. You can first book an appointment for you concerning a health professional, and then he will respond to you most quickly, as soon as possible.
