Mental Health Challenges in Childhood and Adolescence

Catalog description

This course will be an opportunity for the student and the instructor to explore the concept "psychopathology" as it has been and is applied to childhood and adolescence. There are some psychopathological challenges that are unique to childhood and some which can manifest themselves throughout childhood into adolescence and adulthood. The social worker/practitioner will encounter a wide range of symptomatic presentations among his/her clients. At this time in the fields of clinical social work, psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy there are numerous frameworks available to the practitioner to aid in an understanding of symptoms in children and adolescents. During the next several weeks three conceptual frameworks will be articulated. These three frameworks will elucidate the possible meaning, origin, and/or function of the symptoms and offer to the student a vocabulary with which to engage the situation. At the turn of the 19th century into the 20th century, psychoanalysis emerged in Europe as a method of understanding symptoms from the point of view of internal conflict within the child or adolescent. After World War II in the U.S.A., a model of understanding symptoms from a systemic/cybernetic point of view revolutionized the diagnostic processes involved in working with children and adolescents. Since the late 1980's, postmodern ideas, primarily from Europe and Australia, have greatly influenced and informed the understanding of psychopathology in children and adolescents. Narrative, social constructivist, and linguistic usage patterns have become a common vocabulary in the discourse on psychopathology. This course is not intended to be a reading of the history of child psychopathology. It is intended to expose the student to the most influential paradigms in the field of child psychopathology.