Psychiatric/Mental Health Nursing Care of Children and Adolescents

Abstract

The prevalence of mental health problems among children and adolescents appears to be on the increase. Accordingly, the contemporary P/MH nurse is likely to encounter children and/or adolescents in the mental health care system and thus, after taking a nuanced view of the epidemiology, the chapter draws on the American Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nurse practice parameters and uses these to inform our approach to assessment. Core interventions, which are drawn from and congruent with the principles and practices of trauma-informed-care are then explored, and P/MH nurses are then exhorted to involve and work collaboratively with clients and their families. The chapter then focuses on three particular challenges for the P/MH nursing care of children and adolescents. While these are by no means the only challenges that P/MH are likely to face, they are encountered frequently and show up with conspicuous regularity in the relevant extant literature. Namely: dealing with aggression and violence; dealing with children and adolescents with a history of trauma, abuse, neglect, and/or mistreatment and dealing with children and adolescents with a history of self-harm or/and suicide attempts.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the socio-emotional problems of children were not always understood and debated by health professionals as mental health problems, and parents or educators did not refer these children to mental health care. The justifications, given by parents when confronted with aggressive behavior or disobedience of their children, were related to the characteristics of children’s own development or to parental anxiety, often mobilized as an argument by educators.