Week 4: Assessment of Children Flashcards
What can you use to define ‘normal’?
- what’s normal for a child
- what the friends are like
- what parents expect
Define psychological disorders
Patterns of behavioural, cognitive, or physical symptoms that are associated with one or more of distress, disability, and increased risk for further suffering or harm
List things you need to consider when assessing normality in children
- labelling: is it beneficial?
- individual strengths
- developmental pathways and sensitive periods
- risk and protective factors
How many children have a mental health problem?
1 in 5
How many children require but don’t receive mental health services?
75%
Why may a child not receive the help they need?
- families responsible for creating environments
- difficulty of noticing when a child is going through things
- they may not be intelligent in articulating their emotions
By 2020…
The demand for child mental health services is expected to double
List the three factors that may be contributing to uneven mental health problems in the population
- disadvantage
- gender
- ethnicity
How many children will have substantial difficulties throughout life?
20%
What individual characteristics are found in well functioning people?
- good intellectual functioning
- appealing, sociable, easygoing
- self efficacy, confidence, high self esteem
- talents
- faith
What family characteristics are behind a well functioning person?
- close relationship to caring parent
- authoritative parenting, warmth, structure, high expectations
- socioeconomic advantages
- connections to extended supportive family networks
What school and functioning characteristics are behind a well functioning person?
- adults outside the family who take an interest in promoting the child’s welfare
- connections to social organisations
- attendance at effective schools
What developmental considerations are involved in the clinical process?
- active, dynamic process of continual change and transformation
- sensitive periods/missed developmental periods
- development is organised and hierarchical
What biological perspectives should be considered in the clinical process?
- importance of brain development
- neural plasticity and role of experience
- genetic contributions
Parietal lobes
Integrate auditory, visual, and tactile signals; immature until age 16
Frontal lobes
Self control, judgement, emotional regulation; restructured in teen years
Corpus callosum
Intelligence, consciousness, and self awareness; reaches full maturity in 20’s
Temporal lobes
Emotional maturity, still developing after 16
List some psychological perspectives of childhood issues
- emotional influences and reactivity
- parent-child interaction
- behavioural and cognitive influences (modelling, attachment)
- family, social and cultural influences
- personality
Describe the ecological framework based on Bronfenbrenner
The person is surrounded by relationships, behaviour settings, and community contexts and all of these impact them
The ecological framework is
- empirically based
- family centred
- assessment driven
- addresses social interactions
- addresses motivation to change
- addresses issues of health maintenance
What is meant by empirically based
- empirically supported
- integrative frameworks
- research on developmental psychopathology
What is meant by family centred
- engagement of caregivers to lead the change process
- proactive approach to engage caregivers through community settings
What is meant by assessment driven
- comprehensive, objective and psychological assessment of children, families, and other relevant environments
- unstructured interviews and direct observations
- use of clinical judgement
