School Mental Health Project

Article of the Month

January 2004

 

Helping Children Cope with Disruptive Behaviors: ADHD, Conduct Disorders, Bipolar Disorders and Anxiety Disorders

 

 

ADHD

 

A short but informative article on ADHD is provided by athealth.com in its "Professional Interview Series." The interview is with Harlan Gephart, MD, the Immediate Past Chair of the American Board of Pediatrics and an ADHD expert, who talks about evidence-based diagnosis and treatment of this disorder.
Click here to access the interview with Dr. Gephart



Conduct Disorder

 

Several articles are available at athealth.com on conduct disorder. They are:

·      Diagnosis and treatment of conduct disorder
Conduct Disorder: Diagnosis and Treatment in Primary Care - Conduct disorder is a psychiatric syndrome occurring in childhood and adolescence, and is characterized by a longstanding pattern of violations of rules and antisocial behavior.

·      Medical and psychological treatment of conduct disorder
Conduct Disorder - Conduct disorder (CD) is one of the most difficult and intractable mental health problems in children and adolescents.

·      Interventions for school behavior problems (pdf)

Conduct and Behavior Problems: Interventions and Resources - An introductory packet from the UCLA Center for Mental Health in School that provides fact sheets and behavioral strategies for managing disruptive students. (This is a large PDF file that may take a while to download.)

·      Antisocial behavior as a predictor of lifetime problems (pdf)

Financial Cost of Social Exclusion: Follow Up Study of Antisocial Children into Adulthood - Antisocial behavior in childhood is a major predictor of the total cost of public services used by age 28.

 

One more article is available from the American Counseling Association. It is Counseling Children with a Conduct Disorder.



Bipolar Disorder

 

Two resources from the National Institutes of Health are useful. The first is a booklet called Bipolar Disorder and provides a good overview. The second is a short article entitled Child and Adolescent Bipolar Disorder: An Update from the National Institute of Mental Health which addresses some of the issues surrounding the diagnosis of bipolar disorder in youth.

 

A third resource is a portion of Chapter 5 (pages 84-95) on bipolar disorder from Affect and Mood Problems Related to School Aged Youth (click here for the full 137-page packet (pdf)) from UCLA’s Center for Mental Health in Schools.

 


Anxiety Disorders

 

Anxiety Disorders, the first resource, is a booklet by the National Institutes of Health.  It is a good overview of the types of anxiety disorders and some of the treatments for those.

 

The second resource is an introductory packet from UCLA’s Center for Mental Health in Schools. Entitled Anxiety, Fears, Phobias and Related Problems: Interventions and Resources for School Aged Youth, it is an 80+ page packet (pdf) which has a more specific focus on children. The table of contents is listed below. “Section IV. Interventions for Anxiety Problems” provides helpful suggestions for the school setting.

 

I.                     Classifying Anxiety Problems; Keeping the Environment in Perspective as a Cause of Commonly Identified Psychosocial Problems

A.        Labeling Troubled and Troubling Youth

B.        Environmental Situations and Potentially Stressful Events

C.        Fact Sheet: Anxiety Disorders in Children and Adolescents

II.                   The Broad Continuum of Anxiety Problems

A.        Developmental Variations

B.        Problems

C.        Disorders

III.                  A Quick Overview of Some Basic Resources

A.        A Few References and Other Sources of Information

B.        Agencies and Online Resources

C.        Consultation Cadre Contacts

IV.                Interventions for Anxiety Problems

A.        Accommodations to Reduce Anxiety Problems

i)                     Anxiety Problems at a New School

ii)                   Affect and Mood Problems: Children and Anxiety

B.        Behavior Management and Self Instruction

i)                     Managing Traumatic Stress

ii)                   Helping Children Cope with Fears and Stress

C.        Empirically Support Treatment

i)                     Children with Phobic and Anxiety Disorders

ii)                   Mastery of Your Anxiety and Panic

D.        Medication

E.        School Advoidance: Reactive and Proactive

V.                  A Few Resource Aids

A.        A Few More Fact Sheets

B.        ERIC Digest

C.        A Few More Resources

VI.                Keeping Anxiety Problems in Broad Perspective