Provided by David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D.
Surgeon General of the United States of America
Chapter 3: Children and Mental Health
Overview of Mental Disorders in Children
Treatment Strategies
Children and adolescents receive most of the traditional
treatments described in Chapter 2, particularly psychosocial treatments, such as
psychotherapies, and various medications. Specific psychosocial and
pharmacological treatment approaches are described in subsequent sections on
specific mental disorders. Much of the research, however, has been conducted on
adults, with results extrapolated to children. Some of the treatments, such as
interactive or play therapy with young children, are unique to clinical work
with this group, while others, such as individual psychotherapy with
adolescents, are similar to clinical work with adults. Many of the treatment
interventions have been“packaged” together in particular arrangements for
delivery in specific clinical settings.
More attention is being paid to the value of multimodal therapies, that is, the
combination of pharmacological and psychosocial therapies. While research is
limited, multimodal studies have shown benefits for treatment of ADHD (see later
section), anxiety (Kearney & Silverman, 1998), and depression. Tempering the
value of psychotherapy as well as pharmacotherapy, which is discussed below, is
that the efficacy of these therapies in the research setting is greater than
that in the real world. The problem of the gap between research and clinical
practice is discussed in greater depth elsewhere in this chapter and in Chapter
2.
Back to the Mental Health: The Surgeon General's Report Table of Contents