Working With Child And Adolescent Mental Health The Central Role Of Language And Communication

In children, mental health challenges and communication differences typically combine in complex and inter-related ways. Remarkably, this crucial point is all too often forgotten, and communication is overlooked. Services are frequently fragmented, leading professionals to look at children through distinct lenses of either mental health or communication, meaning insights can be incomplete and important perspectives unshared. Working with Child and Adolescent Mental Health makes the compelling case that communication is central and should be a primary consideration whenever we think about children’s mental health. With a practical focus, and an easy- to-read format, it suggests how this can be achieved by identifying how practitioners and services can work more cohesively to understand and optimise children’s communication capacities. This book includes: Practical advice, grounded in current research, and presented in an easy-to-read, digestible style Guidance to help practitioners competently and compassionately identify and respond to the needs of children and young people with complex combined communication and mental health needs Real-life case studies from a wide range of settings, unpicked to clearly illustrate topics discussed in the book and offer encouragement and inspiration to practitioners Checklists and questionnaires to help practitioners in daily practice Recommendations for, and links to, useful additional resources Tools to support reflection and enhancement for individual practitioners and services Essential reading for speech and language therapists, psychologists, mental health practitioners, educators, social workers, and anyone else concerned with children’s wellbeing and resilience, this book highlights the transformational impact of placing communication at the heart of all efforts to support children and young people’s mental health.

This book addresses a variety of critical themes that relate to child and adolescent mental health and working memory. It focuses on various theoretical perspectives as well as highlighting implications for practice. The topics contemplated include social media and mental health, parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT), the role of e-learning in mental health, perinatal depression and working memory, language, and reading and behaviour. In focusing on mental ill-health, this book addresses a global concern. The causes of poor mental health are complex and multi-faceted. In acknowledging this complexity, it must be recognized that there is no single ‘magic bullet’ that will solve the problem. A multidisciplinary approach is therefore required for approaching the issues, including a variety of interventions. Finally, the book emphasizes the important contributions that schools, health and social care services and families can provide about addressing the mental health challenges experienced by children and young people.

This book examines the typical pattern of communication development in children and adolescents to enable primary care physicians as well as other clinicians, therapists, and practitioners to assist parents in making informed decisions based on current research. It offers an overview of communication disorders in children and adolescents that typically present before adulthood. The book describes current assessment, diagnostic procedures, and evidence-based interventions. Chapters outline the standard course of speech milestones and ages to begin screening for deficits and their risk factors. Subsequent chapters review best practices for every aspect of treatment, including care planning, discussing disorders and interventions with parents, making referrals, and collaborating with other providers. The book also discusses evidence-based interventions for specific disorder types such as language impairment, stuttering, language disabilities, and hearing impairment. In addition, the book offers guidance on how to speak about care planning as well as quality of life issues related to communication disorders with other caregivers and parents. Featured topics include: Screening and identification procedures of communication disorders. Key elements to providing family-centered care. Common causes, assessment, and treatment of specific language impairment (SLI) in children. Hearing loss and its impact on the development of communication in children. Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and the role of attention in the development of language in children. Communication development in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The Clinical Guide to Assessment and Treatment of Communication Disorders is a must-have resource for clinicians and related professionals, researchers and professors, and graduate students in the fields of child, school, and developmental psychology, pediatrics and social work, child and adolescent psychiatry, primary care medicine, and related disciplines.

Child and Adolescent Psychology provides an accessible and thorough introduction to human development by integrating insights from typical and atypical development. This integration cements understanding since the same processes are involved. Knowledge about atypical development informs the understanding of typical development, and knowledge about typical development is a necessary basis for understanding atypical development and working with children with disorders. Based on international research, and informed by biological, social and cultural perspectives, the book provides explanations of developmental phenomena, with a focus on how children and adolescents at different age levels actually think, feel and act. Following a structure by topic, with chronological developments within each chapter, von Tetzchner presents and contrasts the major theoretical ideas in developmental psychology and discusses their implications for different aspects of development. He also integrates information about sensory, physical and cognitive disabilities and the main emotional and behavioral disorders of childhood and adolescence, and the developmental consequences of these disabilities and disorders. Child and Adolescent Psychology is accompanied by online resources for lecturers and students to enhance the book, including essay questions for each chapter, Powerpoint slides and multiple-choice questions. The book and companion website will prove invaluable to developmental psychology students.

Communicating with Vulnerable Children provides a wealth of practical suggestions for all professionals who work with children and young people. It explains how best to communicate when the child has suffered adversity, such as experiences of harm and abuse, or witnessing violence or other distressing events. The focus is on helping children provide full and accurate accounts of their experiences without suggestion from an adult. Each chapter sets out the relevant policy and procedural context and reviews the available evidence, then gives recommendations and practical advice about how best to communicate with the child. This book is aimed at anyone who works with or spends time with children. This ranges from professionals whose specialist tasks include helping those who have been abused or neglected, such as social workers, child and adolescent mental health professionals or children's guardians within the Family Justice system, through to those who see children every day, such as teachers. It will be also be an invaluable guide for doctors, health visitors and all those advising concerned parents.

Improving Communication in Mental Health Settings draws on empirical studies of real-world settings to demonstrate contemporary practice-based evidence, providing effective strategies for communicating with patients/clients in mental health settings. The book integrates clinical experience and language-based evidence drawn from qualitative research. Drawing on studies that utilize scientific language-based approaches such as discourse and conversation analysis, it focuses on social interaction between professionals and patients/clients to demonstrate effective communication practices. Chapters are led by clinical professionals and feature a range of mental health settings, different mental health conditions and types of patient/client, and evidence-based recommendations. This book is an essential guide for professionals working in mental health and/or social work, and those training or working in clinical areas of mental health practice.

Test-based psychological assessment has been significantly affected by the health care revolution in the United States during the past two decades. Despite new limitations on psychological services across the board and psychological testing in particular, it continues to offer a rapid and efficient method of identifying problems, planning and monitoring a course of treatment, and assessing the outcomes of interventions. This thoroughly revised and greatly expanded third edition of a classic reference, now three volumes, constitutes an invaluable resource for practitioners who in a managed care era need to focus their testing not on the general goals of personality assessment, symptom identification, and diagnosis so often presented to them as students and trainees, but on specific questions: What course of treatment should this person receive? How is it going? Was it effective? New chapters describe new tests and models and new concerns such as ethical aspects of outcomes assessment. Volume I reviews general issues and recommendations concerning the use of psychological testing for screening for psychological disturbances, planning and monitoring appropriate interventions, and the assessing outcomes, and offers specific guidelines for selecting instruments. It also considers more specific issues such as the analysis of group and individual patient data, the selection and implementation of outcomes instrumentation, and the ethics of gathering and using outcomes data. Volume II discusses psychological measures developed for use with younger children and adolescents that can be used for the purposes outlined in Volume I; Volume III, those developed for use with adults. Drawing on the knowledge and experience of a diverse group of leading experts--test developers, researchers, clinicians and others, the third edition of The Use of Psychological Testing for Treatment Planning and Outcomes Assessment provides vital assistance to all clinicians, and to their trainees and graduate students.

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.