Indian Journal of Health Social Work
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Mental Health and Well-Being of Child: A Global Mental Health Praxis
Fayaz Ahmad Paul1, Danishwar Rasool Dar2, & Arif Ali3
1Ph.D Scholar, Department of Psychiatric Social Work, Lokopriya Gopinath Bordoloi, Regional Institute of Mental Health, Tezpur, Assam, 2Ph.D Scholar, Department of Psychiatric Social Work, Lokopriya Gopinath Bordoloi, Regional Institute of Mental Health, Tezpur, Assam, 3Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatric Social Work, Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS), Dilshad Garden, New Delhi
Correspondence: Fayaz Ahmad Paul, e-mail id: Paulfayazpaul@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
The magnitude of mental health problems in children and adolescents has not been recognized sufficiently by many governments and various policies and decision-makers. The epidemiology of these issues is a foundation for service design and the state of children’s mental health services in various parts of the world. The fundamentals and approaches to treating children’s and adolescents’ mental health issues, as well as the function of global organizations and advocacy groups. Mental health has become progressively recognized as an important issue in worldwide health, but child mental health has largely remained in its shadows. Globally mental health problems affect 10–20% of children and adolescents. The mental health requirements of children and adolescents are not met, especially in low-income and middle-income countries, even though they constitute a major source of health-related disability in this age group and have longlasting effects on individuals’ lives. Action is imperative to reduce the burden of mental health problems in future generations and to allow for the full development of vulnerable children and adolescents worldwide.
Keywords: Well-being, Child, Services, Global Mental Health, Psychiatry
The prevalence and importance of child mental
health problems have been progressively
recognized in recent years. From a historical
viewpoint, child psychiatry, as well as child
mental health in general, are relatively recent
fields within health care. While child mental
health issues are essential in their own right,
they frequently lead directly to adult mental
health issues (Patel et al., 2013). For children’s
healthy emotional, social, physical, and
cognitive development, psychological well being is crucial, and this is widel y
acknowledged. The effectiveness of various
therapies to enhance children’s mental health
and treat mental health issues and disorders
is now well supported by the available
research (Wenceslau et al., 2015). It has been
a big challenge for the country’s available
mental health experts to lead efforts for
promotion, prevention, identification, and
early intervention in child mental health due
to their clinical preoccupations.
Although there were some early efforts to
offer care for children with mental health
issues by faith-based and philanthropic
groups, as well as attentive and kind lay
advocates, formal clinical work with children
and teenagers did not truly begin until early
in the twentieth century, with Maudsley’s
publications on childhood mental illness, Anna
Freud’s papers on child psychotherapy, and
Kanner’s clinical findings on what we now call
autism spectrum disorder (Rey et al., 2015).
Mental health experts did not have clinical
studies of medication until the 1960s,
beginning with Attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder by John Werry. What began as a
specialist speciality service has now rapidly
spread, not only in Western nations but also
globally (Tan et al., 2008). A growing need
for mental health care among children and
teens is becoming increasingly apparent and
is currently considered an epidemic
Psychosocial stressors associated with social
determinants such as poverty, famine, war,
refugee relocation, discrimination, racial and
ethnic inequities, and a lack of support for
families in their child-rearing roles have been
the main forces behind such an explosion in
need in recent years (Fergusson & Horwood
(2001). Furthermore, as Chachar and Mian
point out, children’s mental health needs are
becoming more prominent as the more
fundamental requirements of food, shelter,
and social securit y are addressed in
underdeveloped countries (Rutter, 2011).
Three recent events have accelerated the
development and extension of children’s
mental health services around the world.
These have enclosed the growing body of
scientific and research findings about child
development, diagnostic identification, and
treatments, all of which eventually support a
biopsychosocial approach (Mian, 2022). The
spread of specialized training and services for
children and youth, initially in western
countries but increasingly spreading to many other parts of the world. At the same time,
as global development has expanded, we have
seen larger levels of negative social factors,
which raise the likelihood of mental diseases
impacting children and teens and resulting in
a variety of negative outcomes suicide,
traumatic stress, and increasing rates of
developmental disorders (Rodway et al.,
2016).
Throughout its brief history, the theory,
science, and practice of child and adolescent
mental health have placed a heavy emphasis
on the social, from various Emeritus thinkers
like (Sigmund Freud, John Piaget, Maria
Montessori, George Herbert, Eric Erickson,
and Lev Vygotsky) (Pumariega & Joshi (2010)
who linked culture to appropriate psychosocial
and psychological development to the recent
science of epigenetics, (Lester et al., 2011)
which demonstrates the biological influence
of bad social factors through genetic
mutations to the growing evidence of how
cultural changes affect mental health. We also
recognized early on how family and community
strengths and su pports are critical
components of the healing environment for
effective treatment and have incorporated
them into some of our most modern care
models, such as the community method of
concern (Pumariega et al., 2017). WHO
recognizes a deficit in Children’s mental health
services. While there are effective treatments
for psychiatric diseases. According to the
World Health Organization, many people with
these conditions go untreated. Every fifth child
is affected by a mental health condition (World
Health Organization, 2001).
This editorial emphasizes the role of socialecological factors and social context in many
aspects of children’s mental health, as well
as in a variety of international contexts. The
negative influence of socioeconomic
determinants on children’s mental health, as
shown by the review article on poverty,
hunger, and homelessness, (Pumariega et al., 2022) the impact of the India and Pakistan
conflict in the region of Kashmir, the recent
Russia-Ukraine war, (Mihajlovic & Segalit
(2022) the chronic refugee existence under
occupation in Palestine, the loss of parents
and caregivers in the Covid-19 pandemics
(Cagande et al., 2022) and the increasing
strain of urbanization in developing nations
viz Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey (Yilmaz et al.,
2022). Special issues linked with social,
mental health, and physical adversities, such
as the continued challenge of treating trauma
in children and youth, the impact of increasing
teenage social isolation and its relationship
to the psychosocial construct of anomie, and
the reasons leading to the growing trend of
juvenile mass shooters (Rothe E, 2022).
The specific obligation of child and adolescent
psychiatrists and child mental health experts
is to serve as advocates for children facing
abuses by governments and their agents
during the immigration process, as a result
of military occupation, a result of active
combat, and as advocates for children’s
mental health services and supports in
developing countries(Guzman et al., 2022).
The use of systematic clinical techniques and
tools to aid with risk identification, leveraging
limited services through consultative service
and addressing psychological service needs
for children in various national and service
system contexts, such as the use of systematic
suici de screening for adolescents in
healthcare settings, provision of collaborative
treatment through primary care child
psychiatry consultation, and the use of level
of care intensity tools to assist with risk
identification (Millsaps & Richardson (2022).
CONCLUSION
Mental health disorders are very popular. The
prevalence of mental health disorders in
children and adolescents is almost 15% worldwide. With the recognition that 50% of mental
health disorders begin by the age of 14 and 75% by the age of 24, child and adolescent
mental health has become a global priority.
This editorial is only a small sample of the
work that child mental health specialists and
researchers conduct daily around the world.
By offering this exceptional intermittent, we
hope to bring the agenda of child and family
mental health to the forefront of psychiatry,
as well as the agenda of addressi ng
unfavorable social determinants to the
attention of policymakers worldwide, and
addressing the negative socioeconomi c
determinants of mental health is possibly the
most effective strategy to child mental health
and developmental prevention all over the
world
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Conflict of interest: None
Role of funding source: None
Role of funding source: None
ISSN: 2582-1393 (Online)