The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) sponsors National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day, which takes place on May 10th, 2018. “Partnering for Health and Hope Following Trauma” is the theme for this year.
The significance of meeting the social, emotional, physical, behavioral, and mental needs of children and young people who have experienced trauma in some way throughout their lives will be highlighted on this day. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIH) estimates that 20 percent of all American children may receive a mental health condition diagnosis at some point in their lives or currently.
Extremely stressful situations that have broken your child’s feeling of security and made them feel helpless in a frightening environment might result in emotional and psychological damage. Although threats to life or safety are frequently present in traumatic events, any circumstance that leaves a person feeling helpless and alone can nonetheless be distressing.
People with drug addiction who also struggle with depression that drives their drug use report improvements in their ability to resist drug usage with the aid of the spravato treatment, which results in a decrease in their drug urges.
An accident, an injury, a natural disaster, or a violent attack are examples of one-time experiences that can result in emotional and psychological stress. Continuous, unrelenting stress from things like dealing with sexual harassment at work, residing in a neighborhood plagued by crime, or managing a chronic medical condition can also result in emotional and psychological trauma.
In addition, frequently missed triggers of emotional and psychological stress include losing a loved one, having recent surgery, switching schools, getting divorced, making a significant relocation, or going through a profoundly depressing event. Teenagers who experienced any type of childhood trauma, such as living in an unstable or unsafe environment, being separated from a parent, suffering from a serious illness as a child, or experiencing any type of abuse as a child, including neglect, physical, verbal, and sexual abuse, are more likely to experience trauma.
Numerous mental health illnesses that can manifest in childhood or later in life can be caused by untreated or unresolved trauma. In order of prevalence, common mental health conditions in kids aged 8 to 15 include the following:
- Attention-Deficit ADHD, or hyperactivity disorder
- mood disorders and severe depression
- Behavior disorder
- Anxiety conditions
- disorders of eating
Young children with eating disorders
The typical age of onset for eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, binge eating disorder, and bulimia nervosa is 15 years old. However, some specific eating disorders, such as pica and ARFID, are more prevalent in youngsters than in any other age group.
Due to peer pressure from society and the media that children as young as seven and nine years old are developing anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, dieting in early childhood is becoming more and more popular. The messaging regarding food and weight gain can be emotive and even moralistic, categorizing it as either “good food” or “bad food,” which may lead to a perfectionistic view of food rather than a balanced one.
Trauma treatment
It takes time and patience to treat a mental illness or eating disorder in childhood, and in most cases, there is an underlying trauma component that needs to be identified and dealt with before the condition at hand can be treated. The main treatments used to treat people with a history of trauma are trauma-informed care and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR).
Once the trauma component is acknowledged and addressed, psychotherapies including cognitive behavioral therapy, play therapy, family therapy, and dialectal behavioral therapy can be used to address the individual mental health condition.
