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Parenting Children with Mental Health Challenges: A Guide to Life with Emotionally Complex Kids offers overwhelmed readers guidance, solidarity, and hope. The author, a “mental-health mom” who’s survived indignity, exhaustion, and the heartbreak of loving a child with multiple mental-health disorders, writes with frankness and occasional humor about the hardest parenting job on earth. Drawing on her own experiences and those of other parents, plus tips from mental health professionals, Vlock suggests ways of parenting smarter, partnering better, and living more fully and less fearfully in the shadow of childhood psychiatric illness. Addressing the many hurdles children and families must face, including life on the home front, school, friendships and relationships, and more, the book shows readers that they’re not alone—and they are stronger than they think. With its combination of easily digestible, to-the-point suggestions, clear action items, and first-person parent/kid stories, its aim is to make mental-health parents feel stronger and better, while actively seeking positive outcomes for their kids and families. With rates of mental health diagnoses among youth on the rise, this invaluable resource will help parents through the trying times with support, understanding, and guidance.

With rapidly rising rates of mental health disorders, changing patterns of occurrence, and increasing levels of morbidity, the need for a better understanding of the developmental origins and influence of mental health on children’s behavioral health outcomes has become critical. This need for better understanding extends to both the growing prevalence of mental health disorders as well as the role and impact of neurodevelopmental pathways in their onset and expression. Addressing these changes in disease patterns and effects on children and families will require a multifaceted approach that goes beyond simply making changes to clinical care or adding personnel to the health services system. New policies, financing, and implementation can put established best practices and numerous research findings from around the country into action. The Maternal and Child Health Life Course Intervention Research Network and the Forum for Children's Well-Being at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine jointly organized a webinar series to explore how mental health disorders develop over the life course, with a special emphasis on prenatal, early, middle, and later childhood development. This series centered on identifying gaps in our knowledge, exploring possible new strategies for using existing data to enhance understanding of the developmental origins of mental disorders, reviewing potential approaches to prevention and optimization, and proposing new ways of framing how to understand, address, and prevent these disorders from a life course development perspective. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the series.

Mental, neurological, and substance use disorders are common, highly disabling, and associated with significant premature mortality. The impact of these disorders on the social and economic well-being of individuals, families, and societies is large, growing, and underestimated. Despite this burden, these disorders have been systematically neglected, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, with pitifully small contributions to scaling up cost-effective prevention and treatment strategies. Systematically compiling the substantial existing knowledge to address this inequity is the central goal of this volume. This evidence-base can help policy makers in resource-constrained settings as they prioritize programs and interventions to address these disorders.

"...[T]his book provides valuable information on taking care of children with complex mental health challenges. Chapters present information in tabular format, which makes the book easy to use in practice. The case vignettes are practical and helpful in understanding a child as a unique case and not just a diagnosis. The list of the most valid and reliable screening and assessment tools is valuable, as is the information on useful websites. The book also clearly provides up-to-date, basic information on neurobiology and genetics, as well as ongoing research in the field."--Doody's Medical Reviews Mental health practitioners who work with children are often confronted with complex, difficult-to-treat mental health issues that do not respond to conventional methods of psychotherapy. These children have a web of multiple impairments that are comprised not just of emotional and behavioral issues, but also learning and other cognitive disorders.Children With Multiple Mental Health Challenges presents an innovative, evidence-based approach to understanding and treating this difficult population that integrates the child's development and functioning into diagnosis and treatment. It does not rely on diagnostic categories alone, but explores the functioning of children in several dimensions of development and considers multiple levels of influence. The book builds on an individualized, integrated approach to present a variety of evidence-based strategies for working with children with multiple challenges. It considers children from preschool age to adolescence with a number of severe difficulties. These may include extreme aggression, oppositional defiant behavior, significant anxiety and depression, cognitive and academic challenges, delays in speech and language, problems with attention and concentration, sensory integration problems, and unresolved trauma. The treatment strategies included can be used by various specialists within the intervention team, as well as by parents and teachers. Key Features: Presents an innovative approach to working with children with multiple disorders, often the most challenging cases for clinicians Moves beyond standard "recipes" for treatment planning to encompass developmental (including social and biological factors) and functional aspects of working with children Includes case studies as well as detailed treatment plans Offers treatment strategies that can be used by the intervention team, teachers and parents

"Understanding Mental Health Problems of Children and Adolescents: A Guide for Social Workers provides a practical guide for social workers on promoting positive mental health in youth from a system of care perspective. Social workers will gain an understanding of the scope of mental health issues in youth to include definitions, etiology, evidence-based treatments. The book emphasizes the importance of collaborating with youth and caregivers, importance of addressing issues from a strengths and trauma informed perspective, and of cultural humility practice. A unique aspect of the book is the presentation of real life case studies allowing the reader to apply the information in each section of the book. Each diagnosis is presenting in two chapters. The first chapter discusses the DSM criteria, biological aspects of the disorder, differential diagnosing, followed by a case study applying the diagnostic criteria. The second chapter presents evidenced based treatments and medications. Presentation of how to access evidenced based treatments for each diagnosis is provided. Followed by a discussion of the outcomes of the case studies from the previous chapter"--

Bringing together treatment and referral advice from existing guidelines, this text aims to improve access to services and recognition of common mental health disorders in adults and provide advice on the principles that need to be adopted to develop appropriate referral and local care pathways.